Towards the enhanced transparency of Thailand's forest data

26/03/2021

Forests play a pivotal role in combating climate change by absorbing and storing carbon from the atmosphere. Forest monitoring is critical to ensuring that countries stay on target with emission reduction goals within the framework of the Paris Agreement. Robust and easy-to-access forest data can support the formulation, monitoring and adjustment of forest-related policies, inform citizens and stakeholders, help track progress towards sustainable forest management and reduce emissions related to forest loss.

As for other forested countries eager to generate reliable forest data, forest monitoring activities are an important step on Thailand’s journey to combat deforestation and climate change. Under the GEF-funded project "Building global capacity to increase transparency in the forest sector (CBIT-Forest)," the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is supporting countries in their efforts to increase transparency in the forestry sector. The project's innovative approach enables governments worldwide to have better access to high-quality forest information and data, tools, e-learning courses, information resources and webinars - all tailored to national needs and conditions.

In Thailand, one of CBIT-Forest’s pilot countries in Southeast Asia, the project is building on support provided by FAO under the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility from 2018 to 2020. FAO has assisted the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation of Thailand in developing Forest Reference (Emission) Levels (FREL/FRL) for REDD+, so the country can set a benchmark against which it will measure the emissions reduced from implementing a national REDD+ action plan. As part of this process, National Forest Inventory (NFI) data were combined, harmonized and re-interpreted to develop nationwide forest carbon stocks. New remote-sensing based products were also developed.

All of these activities have become a strong basis for the CBIT-Forest project actions to further contribute to the improvement of Thailand’s forest data transparency and sustainability. Since 2020, under CBIT-Forest, FAO has supported the development of Thailand’s National Forest Monitoring System (NFMS) roadmap with a tool based on the Voluntary Guidelines for National Forest Monitoring System. The tool, also utilized by other REDD+ countries, helps Thailand identify capacity gaps and weaknesses and address its NFMS needs in a targeted manner.

The assessment of Thailand's NFMS was done in a technical workshop that took place in July 2020. At the event, more than 40 participants from key government and civil organizations provided unique insight on a broad range of key forestry topics, from institutionalisation to sampling design, data collection, data management and dissemination of the results.

Based on their discussions, the participants have jointly drafted a roadmap and set a list of activities for improving the country’s forest monitoring system. These activities were further discussed to ensure alignment with CBIT-Forest, and other projects and government programs to reach common goals, build synergies and avoid overlap. Now, in 2021, CBIT-Forest will support capacity development events related to data analysis and fieldwork, efforts to make NFI metadata publicly available and updating the NFMS documentation.

This post was originally featured on http://www.fao.org/in-action/boosting-transparency-forest-data/news/detail/en/c/1388189/

ELearning course on forests and transparency: https://elearning.fao.org/course/view.php?id=587

Poster: http://www.fao.org/3/ca9905en/ca9905en.pdf

Information note on the NFMS assessment tool: http://www.fao.org/3/ca9903en/ca9903en.pdf

NFMS assessment tool, quick guidance: http://www.fao.org/3/cb0988en/CB0988EN.pdf

For more information, please contact:

Gael Sola

Forest and REDD+ Technical Expert

National Forest Monitoring Team, FAO Vietnam

[email protected]

Rocio Condor

Forestry Officer,