The Climate Resilient Green Economy (CRGE), Ethiopia’s national strategy to achieve a middle-income status by 2025 has “Forestry: Protecting and re-establishing forests for their economic and ecosystem services, including as carbon stocks” among one of the four pillars of Ethiopia’s green economy. In order to support national and regional decision-makers and actors responsible for planning and managing forests and related resources in Ethiopia, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) under the UN-REDD Programme published a set of guidelines that focus on promoting sustainable management of Ethiopian forests. The publications were produced in collaboration with the Center for...

The Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) have joined forces to protect West Africa's forests and help safeguard the livelihoods of millions of people who depend on them. The three institutions will carry out a five-year project aimed at strengthening sustainable forest and land management, addressing transboundary forest threats, maximising the livelihoods of forest-depended communities, and building climate resilience across 15 countries in West Africa. The project - to be implemented by ECOWAS with financial support of over $8 million from Sida and technical...

Local communities are key forest stakeholders, and their involvement in decision-making and sustainable management of forests generates positive outcomes for livelihoods, rural development, and forest conservation. In particular, countries in Latin America are advancing in the process of developing the concepts of community forestry as a collaborative governance approach to forest management. The approach is also a crucial part of countries’ efforts to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD+) and contribute to national and global action to combat climate change. For example in Colombia, it has been estimated that more than one million  people depend on forests for their...

  This article originally appeared on the UN-REDD Programme website. Click here to go to the original post.   Nine years since the launch of the UN-REDD Viet Nam Phase I Programme, Vietnam has marked a milestone at the end of 2018, by closing its Phase II Programme. What have these nine years achieved, and what has it meant for REDD+ in general and Vietnam in particular?   “Graduation from the REDD+ readiness phase” is the short answer, but for Vietnam, it is more than that. REDD+ readiness has paved the way for transformational change in the forestry and land use sectors. Back in 2009, when REDD+ was...

  This article originally appeared on the UN-REDD Programme website. Click here to go to the original post.   “Land cover mapping in the lower Mekong has been challenging in the past, based primarily on outdated maps using different criteria,” said Dr. David Saah, Professor at the University of San Francisco and Managing Principal of the Spatial Informatics Group (SIG). Competing objectives, priorities and resource limitations, in the Mekong and beyond, often mean differential treatment and sometimes omission of key land cover features. For example, forest ministries focus on mapping forest biodiversity, structure, condition, and use. Agriculture departments typically mask out forest cover, displaying features...