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Mountain committee of Argentina receives Collect Earth training

05.10.2020

Over 30 members of the National Committee for the Sustainable Development of Mountain Regions of Argentina participated in an online capacity building workshop on Collect Earth organized by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

Conducted within the framework of “National Land Monitoring and Information System for a transparent NDC reporting,” a project financed by the International Climate Initiative (IKI), the workshop presented Collect Earth as a data collection tool for the assessment of land use changes. It aimed to present the technology to policy advisors to illustrate its possible operationalization.

The second objective of the workshop was to train technical teams in the use of Collect Earth for possible adoption in the reporting of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – such as measuring green vegetation changes in mountain areas in relation to SDG indicator 15.4.2, the Mountain Green Cover Index – and other reports to the United Nations (UN).

Participants included members of governmental institutions, local authorities, the Argentinean army, research centres and universities from a wide range of backgrounds and disciplines.

“In order to achieve the 2030 Agenda, mountains must be fully included in the implementation of the SDGs. For this reason, opportunities like this – to learn more about the importance of mountains and the possibilities that technologies such as Collect Earth present us – are necessary and important. This course is a great example of what UN organizations can offer, and we are happy to facilitate this training,” said Rosalaura Romeo, Mountain Partnership Secretariat Programme Officer at FAO.

Argentina has participated in similar past capacity development exercises In 2014, FAO conducted a training directed to officers of Argentina's forestry department and environmental institutions on the use of Collect Earth for the first phase of the National Forest Inventory and reporting of Green House Gas inventory activity data. Argentina also participated as a partner in the IKI/BMU funded Global Forest Survey, contributing to the assessment of plots using Collect Earth.

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