South-South cooperation is driving climate action in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Côte d’Ivoire

09/08/2018

Together, African forests form one of the biggest carbon sinks in the world. Recognising the role of forests in helping mitigate climate change, many African countries are working towards implementing Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) activities.

In such a vast region, each forest has unique biodiversity and ecological systems, as each REDD+ country has differing political, economic and social systems which interact with forests. Nevertheless, the design of the forest monitoring system, even if considering national circumstances, is based on international agreements and rules. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) motivates countries to set up forest monitoring systems adherent to its requirements, in order to be eligible for results-based payments under REDD+. Therefore, countries often find themselves dealing with the same range of challenges. Facing them together is a key tool in upscaling REDD+ activities and enhancing international collaboration.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo and Côte d'Ivoire - Together for increased transparency in reporting

On 6 June 2018, the Ministry of the Environment and Sustainable Development of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Ministère de l'Environnement et Développement Durable, MEDD) welcomed Cote d’ Ivoire (Ministère de la Salubrité, de l'Environnement et du Développement Durable, MINSEDD) for a 3-day south-south cooperation (SSC) event. Facilitated by the REDD+/National Forest Monitoring team of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the exchange built on the success of a series of technical meetings held since 2017 with both countries. Financially supported by the Central African Forest Initiative (CAFI) and UN-REDD Cote d’Ivoire, and building upon work which has been supported by both initiatives, the event provided a forum to exchange knowledge and experiences on reporting to the UNFCCC with focus on Measuring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) for REDD+.

The discussions focused on several main issues:

Institutional arrangements for a sustainable reporting process (Day 1)

The first step of any MRV process is the establishment of Institutional arrangements (IAs). IAs allow countries to define responsibilities within the national institutions and other relevant organizations to develop and implement their MRV. Participants highlighted the importance of assessing and documenting the strengths and weaknesses of the existing IAs as well as shared experiences on how to improve data sharing and storage to make the reporting more consistent and transparent.

During the discussion, the delegates from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) presented a history of the country’s Technical Platform for Consultation (PTC). PTC is a platform that is used by stakeholders such as line-ministries, NGOs and international organizations to discuss technical matters related to the forest monitoring system.

Mr Aimé Mbuyi Kalombo, the Head of Climate Change Division at the DRC’s Ministry of the Environment, Conservation Nature and Sustainable Development, expressed that the PTC has enabled the country to gain more traceability of data through harmonisation of methodologies used by different stakeholder. He said:

“The PTC is a place where stakeholders freely talk about their methodological constraints and challenges and where practical solutions are discussed that can serve the country’s national reporting mechanisms.”

MRV for REDD+ to Achieve Results-Based Payments (Day 2)

Countries shared their experiences with the construction of Forest Reference Emission Level and/or Forest Reference Level (FREL/FRL) and the technical assessment process once they were submitted to the UNFCCC.

These reference levels are key for REDD+ countries who would like to express their voluntary contribution to international mitigation through REDD+ actions under the UNFCCC and receive results-based payments. Results-based payments require the successful implementation of REDD+ actions, which lead to measurable results. These REDD+ results are calculated by measuring emissions or removals after the implementation of REDD+ activities against a FREL/FRL.

Esther Mertens, Agriculture, Forestry, and Other Land Use (AFOLU) expert from FAO, expressed her enthusiasm in discussing the topic together with the delegations from both countries:

“The participants noted various opportunities and needs on aspects related to the Quality Assurance and Quality Control, data archiving and uncertainty analysis as key elements for improving their forest and land use data. It is great to see how countries benefit from tools such as Open Foris, and methodologies to improve data management techniques further together.”

Both DRC and Côte d'Ivoire expressed their wish to update their FREL/FRLs in the future by including more activities, such as degradation. To do so, the countries will need to adopt new tools and methodologies.

“FREL/FRL of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Côte d'Ivoire have many similarities, especially regarding the activities taken into account (deforestation). Both countries intend to improve their FREL/FRL documents by taking into account the degradation of the forest,” said Traore Soulemane, MRV Technical Assistant from Côte d'Ivoire.

Support data-informed decision-making (Day 3)

Data collection, analysis and dissemination of forest-related data is important for policy-makers and other stakeholders to protect forests and manage them sustainably. Elements such as comparability and consistency are key to providing timely and reliable data. Increased recognition of the importance of forests has encouraged the development of forest monitoring systems for MRV for REDD+, which has resulted in an unprecedented increase in the availability, and transparency of countries’ forest-sector data.

In order to highlight the importance of transparent forest monitoring systems for greenhouse gas reporting, the delegates from Côte d’Ivoire have been invited to attend a PTC meeting in DRC that took place on the last day of the exchange. Delegates from Côte d’Ivoire were able to learn from DRC’s process and share their experiences specifically related to the analysis of accurate forest cover and land use change data. The discussion touched upon the methodologies to produce a carbon map using Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) for DRC and the advantages of transparency through a forest monitoring portal.

Prof. Jean Paul Kibambe, FREL expert from World Conservation Society in DRC summarized the discussion during the platform: “The exchanges of today have enables to make evidence of the necessity of consolidation and capitalisation of existing data and the necessity to harmonize existing methodologies to produce activity data and emission factors.”

Useful links:

- Coopération Sud-Sud en matière de mécanismes REDD+

- Central African Forest Initiative

- UN-REDD Programme

- FAO REDD+/National Forest Monitoring webpage

- Infographic booklet on FAO’s work on MRV

- From reference levels to results reporting: REDD+ under the UNFCCC (2018 update)

- FAO’s Voluntary Guidelines on National Forest Monitoring

- FAO’s Open Foris suite of tools

- FAO’s guide to south-south cooperation

- REDD+ under UNFCCC

- National Communication submissions