Monitoring Forest and Landscape Restoration (FLR) is a key topic that is receiving increasing global attention. Building on this momentum, on 20 and 21 July 2017 FAO hosted a workshop bringing together a wide community of organizations and country representatives as contributors to the collaborative roadmap for FLR monitoring, an open initiative launched in 2016 with the aim of harmonizing efforts and sharing resources for greater impact. 

40 experts from governments, international NGOs, development banks and the research community – including e.g. Uganda’s Ministry of Water and Environment, the Rwanda Water and Forest Authority, the World Bank, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the World Resources Institute (WRI) and Bioversity International – were engaged in two days of discussion to review products developed in 2016 and 2017 under the collaborative roadmap, which includes the following work streams:

• Stream 1 - Guidance document on FLR monitoring systems. WRI and FAO led the development and drafting of a practical tool to assist in the selection of core indicators to monitor restoration efforts for specific objectives, contexts and users’ needs. The tool will not provide users with an exhaustive menu of indicators, but instead propose a uniform and efficient approach to set up focused restoration monitoring systems.
• Stream 2 - Knowledge base. An interactive FLR knowledge platform, including an on-line library of monitoring resources and capacity building materials, is being developed by FAO and includes to-date 37 resources related to monitoring. Other sections on governance, land use planning, assessment, implementation, economic and financial analysis, capacity development and extension will be developed progressively. Active online since April 2017, the platform will be advertised and disseminated through partners’ networks to ensure extensive access to this wealth of resources.
• Stream 3 - Collaboration at country and regional levels. Participants identified ways for partners to work together in the several existing regional contexts (20x20, AFR100, Mediterranean and Asia Pacific) as well as the needs, opportunities and potential partners in each of those regions.
• Stream 4 – Community of Practice. The needs assessment carried out by FAO in early 2017 was presented. Participants prioritized key themes on which to focus knowledge-sharing events (including webinars in particular) in 2017-2018. These themes include a variety of aspects, such as: role of monitoring, selection of indicators or success factors for monitoring. More information on the knowledge-sharing events will be disseminated soon.
• Stream 5 – Innovation hub. Acknowledging that, to be successful at a wide scale, FLR monitoring systems will need to be inventive and built on innovation, participants were encouraged to improve links with the scientific community and to mainstream innovation through the other activity streams.

FAO is also collaborating on an Expert Consultation on Monitoring Forest Landscape Restoration hosted by the United States SilvaCarbon program, in Washington, DC, on 5-7 December 2017. This participatory workshop will contribute to objectives of the Collaborative Roadmap for FLR Monitoring by engaging up to 50 American and international technical experts, practitioners, and other stakeholders to further explore best practices and technologies for developing integrated FLR monitoring systems at landscape and national scales.

For further information or to participate in the Collaborative Roadmap on FLR Monitoring by becoming part of one or several of the activity streams, please contact the FLRM team: [email protected].