 My name is Emily Donaghan and I work for the National Forest Monitoring team at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and I'll be your moderator for today's session. Let me go right ahead and introduce you also to our first speaker, Fabio Pitschnich of FAO's eLearning Academy. Over to you Fabio. Thank you, thank you very much Emily and welcome everyone to this webinar on Forest Data for Climate Action, the Importance of Legal and Institutional Frameworks. Let me start by introducing myself. I'm an instructional designer and webinar coordinator at the FAO Learning Academy. I actually welcome all today on behalf of Cristina Petracchi, leader of the FAO Learning Academy. This is one of the sessions of international technical webinars that belong to the series that is jointly organized by the FAO Learning Academy together with the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asian and the Pacific and with Agrinium that is here with us today. The idea as you know if you attended our previous sessions in our webinars is really that to try to promote the thematic areas covered in our 350 multilingual learning courses that are available in our platforms and that are delivered for free of charge as a global public good through the FAO Learning Academy. So I would like to invite you all after this webinar to have a look at the offering of the FAO Learning Academy. I will come back to that and give you also a series of link of all the forestry related courses during the Q&A at the end of this webinar. So for the time being I would just like to wish you all an excellent webinar and without any further ado I give you back the floor. Emily over to you. Thanks so much Fabio for the background about this webinar and the series that is part of. Our next presentation will be by Raseo Condor but before we move on we would also like to share with you the following short video on forestry and enhanced transparency. Sorry can you confirm that you were hearing the sound? Otherwise I will reshare it or we can play it later. So you are good on my computer. Okay because I received some contrast. Yes but it's not the problem of the Okay I see that some people heard it some other not so Emily did you hear the sound? I heard it but yeah perhaps we can share the link to the YouTube. Yeah maybe people can watch it on their own time sorry. Yeah the video is actually uploaded also in the page of of the course that we will actually share now in the chat so you can also see the video later. Sorry to everyone that didn't manage to hear the audio there. On that note I think we can move on to the next presentation. Next up we have Raseo Condor, the lead officer for the Global Project CBIT forest building global capacity to increase transparency in the forest sector. She coordinates activities to make forest data more transparent and accessible in the context of the enhanced transparency framework. Over to you Raseo. Thanks Emily and let me start by sharing with you three key messages to introduce this webinar. Better forest data and information is needed to make policies and decisions to protect and sustainably manage forest resources. Additionally forest play a central role in combating climate change therefore given the significant potential of forest. Improving the transparency of forest data we did enhance transparency framework of the Paris Agreement is fundamental. Many countries methodologically collect, analyze and disseminate forest related data using a robust national forest monitoring system. Therefore a fully functioning national forest monitoring system will allow countries to achieve multiple national goals as well as to track progress on climate action. This institutionalization of a national forest monitoring system is crucial to enhance country ownership and pave the way for more streamlined sustainable and transparent use of forest data. But how is FAO contributing then to more transparent data? CVIT forest a two-year global project to step up developing countries ability to collect, analyze and disseminate forest related data to make forest data transparent and accessible in line with enhanced transparency framework. It aims to increase institutional and technical capacities and to boost knowledge sharing and awareness raising about the ETF particularly in the forest sector. How? Organizing sub-regional and national virtual webinars to build capacities and enhance their national forest monitoring systems target in 26 countries as well as 187 countries and territories included as part of the global network of national correspondence for the global forest resources assessment from FAO. Strengthened network of key partners such as the UNFCCC global forest observation initiatives among others. Upgraded FAO global forest resource assessment reporting and dissemination platform to make forest data open and accessible to all. New functionalities are now available since its launch in July last year. Check it out. Knowledge and training material developed including e-learning cores and massive open online courses both in multiple languages to enable access to knowledge about the ETF and forest. The tool developed to facilitate the assessment of gaps and needs in countries national forest monitoring systems including an information note for policymakers and a quick guidance for practitioners all in multiple languages. And labs but not least outreach and sharing of cases studies and best practice on transparency in the forest sector and new cases studies coming up. But let me share now some updates and news in the next few slides. Our free and open e-learning course on forest and transparency under the Paris Agreement is available in four languages with digital batch certification and in PDF printable versions. Share it with your colleagues and networks. It helps understand the importance of national forest monitoring systems in meeting the transparency framework. Already more than 800 users have access to the course from all over the world. Do not miss it and soon Arabic and Russian versions will be available. Let me share with you the one-year in numbers brochure of the CVIT forest which has also activities and products generated in 2020. And finally, I'm excited to share with you all the new information notes called legal assessment to set up and operationalize a national forest monitoring system already available in English, French and Spanish. Thank you for your attention and please visit our webpage or write us if you have any question. Over to you Emily. Thanks so much, Rocio, for showing off the quite impressive amount of work that's been done in just one year of project implementation so far. Leveraging and integrating existing as well as new forms of data and in order to support the strengthening of forest data sharing and utilization which is supported by all the work you've done on developing courses and trainings at the global level. That's quite exciting and next we hear from Francesca Felicani Robles who's going to go into detail on legal and institutional arrangements which are essential aspects for sustainable national forest monitoring systems and in particular in enhancing the transparency of forest data. Francesca is a forestry officer specializing in legal matters relating to forest monitoring and red plus Francesca over to you. Good afternoon. Good morning everybody and thank you Emily for the introduction. I'm actually very glad to be here today and to present some highlights of this very new hard publication. You can see here in the screen the title of this paper which is institutionalization of forest data establishing legal frameworks for sustainable forest monitoring in red plus countries. But before starting looking at its contents I would like to mention very briefly that this paper is actually the result of a long process that started in 2016 when FAO was asked to provide legal assistance to forestry countries mainly from Latin America at that time in order to boost the national forest monitoring systems. So this paper and the lessons that are presented and in particular the country experiences are really the result of those efforts. So today we can say that we are concluding this long process with the launch of this paper but we are still aiming to start a new one as we are really looking to engage in other countries and in region. So here on your right you can see the cover of this new file publication. It has been produced in the context of the UNRED program under which we operate. But thanks to the contribution from Civic Forest it will be available also in Spanish and in French. You can see also the link to the publication under the cover. So today as I was saying we will actually look at some highlights and first of all we will actually understand better why legal and institutional arrangements are needed in the context of national forest monitoring system. We will then describe briefly what steps have been followed in order to develop and adopt a national forest monitoring system legal instrument. We will then also present some types of legal instruments or legal solutions that may be considered as appropriate in order to regulate a national forest monitoring system. And finally but without anticipating further interventions from our panelists today I will very briefly illustrate the case studies and the successful stories that are contained in this paper. So overall this paper provides a basis for understanding the importance of institutionalizing a national forest monitoring system within each country and in particular from a legal perspective but taking also into consideration the relevance of financial commitments and capacity building. The relevance of institutional legal frameworks associated with a national forest monitoring system are also taken into consideration by the government's principles of the voluntary guidelines on national forest monitoring. Those voluntary guidelines have been adopted by FAU in 2017 and they actually underline the relevance of the institutionalization of the national forest monitoring system by formally assigning through legal instruments clear mandates and responsibilities to the entities that are involved in the collection management and analysis of data including through the adoption of adequate coordination mechanisms. So to summarize we can say that a robustly institutionalized national forest monitoring system can help to ensure that national monitoring of forests is considered as a fundamental national government responsibility meaning that there is ownership. It can also ensure that data and information are consistently collected, managed and made permanently available and analyzed over time. It can help to also retain national expertise to ensure that there is institutional memory which is a precondition for further development and improvement of the system and finally among other aspects that a clear governance structure is adopted. Overall regulating national forest monitoring systems can also contribute to informed decision-making processes. These as legal frameworks can provide certainty by codifying existing uses and practices but accessing forest data does not lack its challenges. Lake of trust, cost-related concerns, ambiguous institutional mandates and unclear legal frameworks are actually considered as at the root of challenges related with that accessibility and transparency and while informed solutions can sometimes produce some results they're considered as unsustainable in the medium and long term. So in response to those challenges the adoption of legal arrangements can offer parts of the solution in order to guarantee that there is sustainability, national ownership, financial support and interoperability of the system. The paper also describes the stepwise approach that is adopted by FAO in order to guide the development and adoption of legal instruments in this case related with national forest monitoring system. Overall the approach is based on a systematic gap analysis of the legal framework. Secondly it will include the development of detailed recommendations for the governments highlighting legal barriers, weaknesses and constraints and thirdly if there is such a need at a country level and once the legal reports and the set of recommendations will be validated by the competent national institutions in the context of conservation workshops. We will also contribute in the drafting process. The paper also contains a checklist, a checklist that may help countries in identifying relevant aspects and features that should be included in a national forest monitoring system legal instruments. So this checklist can facilitate the assessment of the inclusion in the legal texts during the drafting process and also it can help to clarify if further consultations are needed at the end. Overall we do consider that involving a legal experts from the early phases of establishing a national forest monitoring system would help to address the relevant concerns and identify appropriate legal solutions that are tailored to the context of each very individual country. So let's now look at some types of legal instruments or legal solutions that may be appropriate in order to regulate the national forest monitoring system. So first of all legal solutions could include adding a corresponding paragraph section or series of articles in the context of a national forest law or environmental law. In this case the amendments made to the national legal instruments will need to be passed by the parliament so this process can take quite long, quite long. It will really depend on the country context. Secondly we could opt for adopting a secondary legislation such as a decree or a resolution. In this case the process will be more expedite as the competent institution will have the authority and mandate to adopt such instruments. And thirdly the contracting parties may want to to stipulate some agreements in order to regulate the national forest monitoring system and in order to enhance its transparency or that accessibility such as data sharing agreements. So just here to conclude I'm showing very briefly the list of countries on your left from Latin America that are included here in the paper and we will find the full stories of those countries and in particular the description of the processes and the contents of the related legal instrument that has been adopted. While we also present in the paper some specific aspects linked to the development of a national forest monitoring system legal instrument from countries from Asia Pacific and Africa. So overall there is more to say but I will leave you with this very last slide and I will really invite you to read the full paper in order to learn more from those country cases. Thank you very much for your attention. Thank you so much Francesca for walking us through in your presentation the paper as well as highlighting the importance, the fundamental importance of law to enhance country ownership and to improve clarity of the roles and the functions of the different entities that are part of a national forest monitoring system. You shed light on something that at least for me was previously somewhat fuzzy which what that is what institutionalisation actually means in the context of forest monitoring. It's obvious now to me how essential this process is we definitely don't want to be repeating work in a few years time but rather to ensure that what we are doing now that we make the most of it and make sure it lasts for the future because we really are at a critical moment now in terms of climate change and environmental destruction. You mentioned in your presentation a number of countries as case studies and what sorts of legal instruments are being used around the world in relation to forest monitoring and the data generated. As you know what we are focusing on in this webinar is the legal and institutional arrangements around forest monitoring and it's a complex topic as you mentioned because it differs so greatly from country to country unlike for example technical advice on sampling frames submitting national reports. For those things guidance is available at a global level and it's widely applicable and acceptable accepted whereas organising and defining the national institutional and legal framework is something that is sort of carte blanche per each country so it very much depends on country context and we are now going to hear from experts from two different countries. We are very happy to have here with us today esteemed colleagues from both Colombia and Uganda. First we're going to hear from Hector Gonzales Rubio, technical advisor from Colombia's Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies. He's going to tell us about the work that has been done in Colombia to develop a legal and institutional framework for forest monitoring. Hector the floor is yours. Okay, hello to everybody. I'm Hector Gonzales, a technical advisor from the Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies Institute from Colombia. I'm going to share my presentation in this moment so I would like to hear from you if you can see the presentation very well. Perfectly, thanks Hector. Thank you. Okay, thank you. So thank you to Fao for this invitation from the webinar for this data for climate actions, the importance of legal and institutional frameworks and today I'm going to talk about experience and lessons learned from Colombia for the institutionalization of forest data and enhancing of national forest monitoring system. Okay, the agenda for today is going to be four points. The first one is about the background, second one is about regulations, the third is about advancing challenges and the fourth correspond with final thoughts. Okay, so about the grounds I want to explain to you how the national information system in Colombia is working out. So first of all, the environmental minister is the main government entity which administrates all the natural resources in the country. So this minister are confirmed with seven institutes, each one of them that allowed one of the components of the environmental. So first one, the EDM correspond with the Andrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies Institutes in Colombia. Second one is the Humboldt Institute which conducts all the research about biodiversity. In Bemar which conducts all the research about marine, oceanic and aquatic ecosystems. Sinchie Institute which develop all the research in the Amazon ecosystems and the IAP institutes which conduct all the research in the Pacific ecosystems. Also we have two additional entities, environmental entities which correspond with the national system of natural parks and also the national agency for environmental license. So all the information of these seven institutes are collected in just one unique platform which correspond with the Colombian Environmental Information Systems. So you can get in the link and this provide all the information about the data environmental information and all the to be served about information and GIS. Within other functions EDM is the official national institute in charge of the National Forest Monitoring System and the reports related with green house gases, inventory, deforestation, red plots, technical analytics, the annual update of report and forest report for file. The institutes EDM so it's the main entity and leader from the National Forest Monitoring System. This monitoring system this monitoring system come from three components, the National Forest Information System, National Forest Improving and Forest Carbon Monitoring System. So here we have the three main components in forest information in Colombia, the National Forest Information System which correspond with all the activities about characterization of the state, dynamics and pressure of forest ecosystem, characterization of the offer and demand for forest timber and not timber planning, policy regulations, methodologies and associated procedures with forest management. From the second component forest and carbon monitoring system we conduct here all the information about forest area and chains over the time, carbon stock storage in natural forest, drivers of deforestation and degradation, and green house gas emissions and red bullets. And the third one correspond with the National Forest Improving here we are done, we are did all the processes and above these protocols and tools to generate file information, analysis and dissemination of the soil, the status scoring and composition of the country forest and it chains over the time. So all this information you can get it from the National Register of Emission Conductions which the name is Orinari, so we have a link and you can get all the information from these three components. Also these three companies are allied with carbon monitoring, community monitoring, we have some groups from Indians, black people and people in local areas which integrate part of the information that we can take on the field. Degradation monitoring is another process, all the workings about deforestation, forest transformation, national forest quantification on one big platform about all the data and environmental information, just the name is the data cube. Also this information provides all the data for the National Greenhouse Gas Emission Information System. Okay, from the revelation components we have three main laws in Colombia, first one is the law of 1999 of 1993, article 17 and paragraph 3 which developed one component of the revelation in Colombia about forest management which correspond with the decree 1600 of 1994 but with the SINA it's partially regulated and the article 2 give directions and coordination about the environmental information system. The SINA correspond with all the seven institutes that I explained to you at the beginning. The law 28, 28, 11 of 1974 corresponded with the National Code of Environmental and Regional Natural Resources, so all these three laws give the structure from the all activities in natural forest that the EDM institute need to do in the country. We have also the decree 291 of 2004 but with the structure of EDM is modified and other provisionals are enacted so we get another functions additional about forest information article 14 create the sub-direction of ecosystem and environmental information and the decree 1655 of 2017 defined the organization and operation of the national forest monitoring system. Established to the organization and operation of the national forest information system the national forest inventory and the forest and carbon monitoring system that will be part of the environmental information system for Colombia and its article 8 with the national registry of greenhouse gas emissions and the national registry of programs and project actions for the reduction of emission from deforestation forest degradation of Colombia in the threat and cost problem. So the main activities of these regulations correspond that EDM is the administering and coordinating entity for all the environmental information in Colombia. The decree formalized the national forest information system, national forest inventory system and the forest and carbon monitoring system instruments all to develop the implementation and decommunication in national and international records. Public nature of the information, the facility of the information, the meteorological guidelines and guidelines for implementation and technical and operational support documents to develop all the information system. So this decree contained these all topics to develop the activities. So first line is clear definitions and concepts, inclusion of principle, transparency and interoperability. This is we need to share all the information and all the information need to be free for the public and private sector designation or responsibility, responsible entities, definition of functions among different entities involved with the involvement of national, subnational entities and other reactors, coordinated mechanisms, government, super in place, integrated reporting process and meteorological aspect, finance and sustainability and a link with national populations. Okay, so all these activities and the decree was in adoption just in one year. So why is it important to regulate tree components? First, to maintain a regulatory framework for monitoring and recording forests and greenhouse gas emission information. Two, allocation of financial records for its operations and three, compliance with international agreements and national policy environment and forestry. So the advancing challenge, we have these four actions, national forest monitoring system was formalized and therefore the national resources must be appropriated for its operations. A recent obviously documents compass for 2021 from 2020, highlights the decree 1655 of 2007 and his compliance. So here we have a new documents and new policy documents for forest and deforestation in the country. It also confirmed the roles again as administrator of the system. Progress over the consolidation of the natural national forest monitoring system instruments and also visible in the in red glass. And another action is finishing the national forest in Victoria. Challenge that we have regulate the national forest service, implement national ecosystem monitoring system for all the country, implement the strategy and operating regulation between the SINA and the regional environmental authorities. Here we have all the webpays and links that you can get all the information from forest management, forest monitoring and environmental information in Colombia. So this is the first one indicator of proportion of natural forest area, change in natural forest area and not right of deforestation, graphs, report tables and metadata for the results, accordance to the end publication criteria, maps and report of the end about forest and carbon monitoring system, contents and map of the SEAC. This is the environmental information system from Colombia and also contents and maps of the end website. So thank you very much for your attention and this is in general all the activities about technical actions and regulatory activities that we are implementing in our country. Thank you. Thanks so much Hector for the presentation, for sharing the experience including the advances and challenges of regulating national forest monitoring in Colombia. Enabling us to see clearly how our legal aspects translate from being on paper into actually monitoring and protecting forests. That was fascinating. I just wanted to remind participants before we move on to our next presentation just to write your questions for our presenters in the Q&A box instead of the chat that will just help us find them and respond to them much more easily. So now let's hear about the experience from another country, Uganda. Our next presenter is Bob Kazungu, principal forest officer under the ministry of water and environment of Uganda. Bob is going to talk to us about the institutionalization of forest monitoring in Uganda. Bob, thank you for being with us here today. Over to you. Thank you, thank you very much. Okay, I want to do another introduction because that was very good. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening to everybody depending on where you are on the globe. I'll talk about the case of the national forest monitoring system in Uganda. Uganda is a country in East Africa, in Africa. It is referred to as the pearl of Africa. The national forest monitoring system is organized in the manner that we have coordinating institution. And that's where I'm coming from. That is the forestry sector support department of the ministry of water and environment. So we generally do overall coordination of the system. And we are responsible for sensitization of all stakeholders that are interested in understanding what is happening with the national forest monitoring system. But we also are responsible for preparing for national reporting. Like any other country, we report to different entities within the country. And the national forest monitoring system provides very useful information to report the different entities, including the parliament, that's the legislature of the country, the cabinet. We even have obligations to report to even our other stakeholders within the country where they need information. So the national forest monitoring system is relevant for enabling us to prepare those national reports. Another institution of importance in Uganda is the national forestry authority, which is a semi autonomous agency or institution, which came into existence in April of 2004. The national forest authority provides a delegated function from the ministry. And that is the main technical support to deliver technical outputs from within the national forest monitoring system. And we have specialized teams in that institution, very good at remote sensing and forest inventory. We also have the other institution of importance, which is the climate change department. The climate change department is in charge of international reporting. And it ensures coherence and the quality of the final outputs to be delivered to the UNF CCCC. So the national forest monitoring system provides forestry-related information that feeds into the requirements for reporting by Uganda to the UNF CCCC, like the NDC and the BURs. We also have the other institution, the district forest services. The district forest services are decongested or deconcentrated structures in the countryside. The country is divided into what called local governments. And within the local government, we have district forest services. And this supports the ministry, my ministry supports an environment and the national forest authority within the field, because they're best in the field. And they support with forest inventory. They support with service and also management of forestry estates. We intend to have them play a very active role in the monitoring component of the national forest monitoring system. For now, we are putting place mechanisms to make sure that happens. Otherwise, the monitoring now is happening through the national forest authority, by the district forest services to be able to do that actively in the future. Now, the national forest monitoring system operates in such a manner that although it was conceived as part of the replacements, just like in many other countries, it does have many other functions that look way beyond just carbon stock reporting. So it has evolved into a system that can report more than just carbon stock reporting. So it produces useful data on forestry management, a formation that is useful for national reporting, land suitability data and reports for restoration, and many other functions other than when some reports come through. Interestingly, the link between the ministry and the national forest authority is such that, as I earlier mentioned, that the ministry of water and environment through the forestry sector support departments does delegate function to the national forest authority. And we delegated the function of biomass mapping and survey at the time of establishment of the national forest authority. And we therefore continued, even when we formed the national forest monitoring system, to delegate NFA to produce, analyze, store data related to the forest sector at both national level and local level for different purposes, as I mentioned. So it's a delegated function from the ministry, the national forest authority. The national forest authority works with the district forest services in a manner that they could actually directly request the field support of the district forest services to collect data. But we normally, as the ministry, support the linkages between the national forest authority and the district forestry services. Because the district forest services report directly to another ministry, which is the ministry of local government. So at ministerial level, we link with the ministry of local government to ensure that the district forest services do collaborate effectively with the national forestry authority. And when data is collected, cleaned and analyzed by the national forest authority, the authority then communicates the reports and results both to my ministry of water and environment, but also to the climate change department, if it has to report for the international obligations or to deliver international communications. So that's quite an interesting institutional arrangement there for the delivery of the national forest monitoring system. There are quite a bit of challenges at the moment. One of the key challenges is that while we have an access to information act, which was instituted in 2004-2005, and also while we have internal agreements between different institutions that are holding onto data, a data sharing protocol is not yet defined. And that of course brings in sort of a challenge because the institution sharing data will benefit a lot from an existing data sharing protocol. So while we can collect some data, we have a lot of data out there, which is held by certain institutions outside our sector. And that is a challenge. So at the moment we are now developing data sharing and management protocol. We are challenged by the usual part of how to sustain the national forest monitoring system. Staffing levels are only at about 50% in the different institutions, in the national forest authority, in the ministry, in the district local governments. And that kind of staffing gap can cause a challenge in the future if we don't deal with it. Data storage issues are also very significant. And at the moment we are still struggling. And thanks to the CBIT Forest Project, which is going to add us some data storage equipment very soon. You know very well that the volumes of data keep increasing over time. Cloud hosting services are increasingly becoming very expensive. And so we need to find the mechanism. And we have support from the FAO, we have support from the USID to be able to do cloud hosting. But also as a government, we are increasing on our servers space every other year, so that we are able to to store our information better. Another challenge that we've seen over the years, since late 2019 when we concluded the National Forest Monitoring System, is the capacity building gap on it. Every other time there is an increase in the requirements to report. And the ever-changing technological advancements are also calling for additional capacity building. And thanks to the online training opportunities that we have, both by the UNFCCC, but also by the FAO e-learning platform. But a lot more training needs to be undertaken because many staff come on board and they need to be trained at every other moment. What are we turning to do next? When we look at the transparency framework and the requirements to report against the enhanced transparency framework of the UNFCCC, you realize that we need and we are continuously building capacity to handle those reporting requirements by UNFCCC against the enhanced transparency requirements. And therefore we believe that as we continue to train more people in the country, more technical people in the country should be able to deal with that. And that is one of the things that we are doing as the next steps for the National Forest Monitoring System. And we are continuing also to mobilize all the data-holding entities and be able to define and raise the profile of the need for them to share data, but also the benefits that are cool because transparency requires that somebody should be able to share information. But the question normally is as to whether they benefit anything from sharing the information with you and whether the information that they're sharing with you is actually not going to be misrepresented. So we are continuing to mobilize all those entities that have information. The other aspect that we think is important to do moving forward is to improve our legal regime for data management. At the moment, we are reviewing the Forestry Policy and Act and this delivers an opportunity for us to strengthen collaboration with data-holding institutions. But learning from experiences of other countries, we are also exploring the need to have a specific rule or decree or pronouncement for data share. Thank you very much. Thanks a lot to you Bob for the great presentation showcasing us the work that Uganda has done in identifying the responsibilities and functions of different entities working with Forest Data. Particularly interesting was the Access to Information Act and establishing data sharing agreements so important as we also learned from Francesca and Hector's presentations to. I want to say thank you to all our presenters so far, Rocío, Francesca, Hector and Bob. Thank you also to all of you that have been listening. I've noticed that there are plenty of questions already in the Q&A box. That's great. Keep them coming because now it's time for the Q&A session. I'd like to first of all pose a question to Hector if that's okay. Hector, it was really interesting to hear about what the decree covers. The decree I think was 1655 that regulates the National Forest Monitoring System in Colombia. It was also interesting to learn that it took about one year to bring that into law. I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit more about the process that led to the adoption of that decree. What were the main steps? Okay, thank you for the questions. So the adoption of the decree started through the law 164 from 1994, where the Congress of the Republic of Colombia approved the National and the United Nations Final Convention of Climate Change, the object of which is the established concentration of greenhouse effective gases in the atmosphere level that prevent anthropogenic interference dangerous in the climate system. So then about it, the government of Colombia implemented the decree in the National Development Plan, the commitment of the national government and state environmental entities to implement the National Forest Development Plan, the National Environmental Policy and the Policy to Control Deforestation. So I think these three instruments correspond with the National Forest Development Plan, National Environmental Policy and the Policy to Control Deforestation. It was the key to develop the D-16O in order to use, manage and conserve the forest. Thanks a lot Hector. Thanks for explaining that. My next question would be then to Bob, back to Bob. Just last year, Uganda became the first country in Africa to submit Red Plus results to the UNFCCC and you did talk about the reporting process to the UNFCCC in your presentation and I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about what has been the role of the organisations you told us about in your presentation in reporting internationally, for example to the UNFCCC and on that note, what is the importance then of transparency for Uganda? Thank you, thank you very much Emily. Yes, there are different organisations that play a role, a significant role in this reporting. We have an expert team which would borrow from different institutions and individuals like the National Forestry Authority which does largely the technical data analysis and they are in the kitchen of this data processing. We also have the McKay University which experts from there are participating to provide us support in synthesising all this information. Then of course the Ministry where I come from would play the coordination, the coordination function and so you find that each of these institutions has a specific role that they bring on board. Just to give an example, we play the coordination, we make sure the experts are mobilised with different capacities. We ensure that the reports that are coming out looked at in terms of equality, in terms of even we look at the methodology to be sure that it is consistent with the methodologies problem we have used in the past for the frail and others. The National Forestry Authority will do the croaking that the data that has been collected either by them or by the local government or by other entities like the private sector that provides us information for commercial plantations for example. Then they put all this information together, they work on the information through analysis and then they provide an output that is required for reporting on results like the emission factors, the activity data, computations and all the things. Then the McKay University comes into the organisation. We know that this methodology probably would be better than this one or we can compare the IPCC methodologies with something else. Every institution has its own role that they play in making sure that by the time we deliver these results to the NFCCC, really there is an agreement with each and everybody with all the experts that we have. That is how the different organisations play a role. We have some people who bring on board peer-reviewers from the SIBO site organisations once in a while just to look at the document to be sure that what we are talking about is consistent with exactly what is happening in the country. Those also coming at that level to provide some input into the preparation of these reports or the results to the NFCCC. In terms of transparency, I must appreciate that all the different tenets of transparency are extremely important for reporting. For example, data that is coming in from the different institutions should be information that ideally has been looked at not only by the people from that institution but also by somebody independent. Normally we ask internally somebody to look at that information so that we are sure that it is information that is coming. Also in terms of transparency that is very key because we are sure that information that is coming in is information that another eye has had a look at and of course we are looking forward in the future to have additional people doing the review of that information internally other than just the national authority and the people that we normally work with. We can have somebody else very independent consultant to have a look at it. In addition, the quite assurance of function that is played by the technical experts from the NFCCC. So in terms of transparency again, we believe that institutions should be able to share information and we also as a means of what kind of variable responsible for coordinating and reporting, we should be able to inform them of what we are going to use that information for. So transparency is extremely important because some people may not share information with you because they are not sure how you are going to make use of that information. So there should be an acknowledgement from you and even a disclaimer to say this information is going to be used for such and such a purpose, nothing more than that. And where there are confidentiality elements that come in, we should be able to express those very clearly that probably this information is only up to this point or we should give them already finished products whenever we are putting it rather than the order. So it is an issue of agreement between those providing information and for me that is a key transparency element for us as a country. Thank you very much. Thank you so much Bob as well for covering, for touching on the aspect of confidentiality which is so important I think also is related to some questions that we have in the Q&A box so that was really great. Thank you. My next question then would be to Francesca if that is all right. Francesca, thanks for explaining the importance of legal and institutional frameworks for the sustainability as well as transparency as Bob has just been talking about of forest monitoring efforts. In light of the enhanced transparency framework, are there any legal and or institutional changes that you foresee that may or could be made in countries to further facilitate transparency in the coming years? Thank you. Thank you Emily for that question and congratulations again to the presenters from Ghana and Colombia for interventions. But overall we can say that for countries to increase transparency and improve access to reliable forest data as we said that permanent institutions having clear mandates, functions and responsibilities established by law which will give more certainty to those functions and competences can have a pivotal role also in order to inform decision making processes and to inform and contribute to get the commitments countries have made at the international level. We have seen the example from Colombia where EDM has a very clear role to play but it's also relevant to establish in which way the functions will be coordinated among EDM and then the minister of environment and how the information the data produced will inform the overall national environmental information system within the country. In terms of instruments, second religions such as a decree can articulate those roles and responsibilities not only at national level but also between the national and the subnational levels and we have seen also Bob from Uganda mentioning the way the ministry delegates some functions to the National Forest Authority but also we have seen the key role that the district forest services do play at territorial level. Another example would be to stipulate data sharing agreements aiming to define what type of information and on the which conditions and among which parties such as the owner of such data and the potential users can be shared. So overall efforts do think should be made in order to build on existing national institutions and capacities but in terms of changes we could for example also promote integration so integration among forest related sectors which could be reflected in a multi-sectoral coordination articulating forests and environmental and land use change monitoring systems which will of course require interoperability and here I have in mind you know the example of Simokute in the context of Costa Rica Simokute is the national monitoring system monitoring the land use change and the consistency within the country so in this case the development of legal and institutional arrangements can then accompany and encourage progress in setting up the governance structure of an integrated monitoring system while also ensuring that the appropriate national institutions are involved since since the very beginning of the process. So those are some of the examples and as you use the term changes I really wanted you know to happen on that. Thank you. Thanks a lot Francesca for explaining that. My next question would be to Rocio. Rocio you presented on what's been achieved under the CBIT forest project in one year and there's some interest in that project in the Q&A box as well so you've achieved an e-learning course math and open online course, case studies, articles, data sharing platform, partnerships all in 2020 which as we all know was a year with the unprecedented challenge of COVID-19 so quite an impressive feat and what then is planned for 2021. Thank you very much Emily and first please let me highlight that knowledge material developed by CBIT forest project will be available always in multiple languages so everybody can access to that information and for example the FRA reporting and dissemination platform and now it's available in four UN languages but soon also in other in the complete set of languages from the UN the six languages. The e-learning course also soon will be available as I mentioned during my presentation in in in other languages so Arabic and Russian so we are really aiming to bring all the knowledge material the global knowledge material we are generating at different levels but also in different languages. We will also have a second and a third edition of a massive open online course in forest and transparency so just follow us check our news in the web page or write us. New cases studies from different regions will also be available in multiple languages so I just say stay tuned and follow us thank you. Thanks so much Rocio, great. Then I think we still have plenty of time so I would like to go back to Hector with another question if that's all right. Impressively, Colombia is the first country in Latin America to have set up a similar legal framework enshrining its national forest monitoring work that's I mean that makes Colombia really a world leader in this regard and while obviously every country as we also heard in Francesca's presentation has its own unique legal system what could be some lessons learned maybe from the experience in Colombia that could be of use to other countries applicable of course within their own legal systems Hector you're on mute just in case. Thanks. Well this is not a very easy activity you know so here we have seven institutes which all have responsibilities about environmental information and also each institutes are working in some components of the forest like all forests that are close to oceanic or aquatic ecosystems and like a man grow ecosystems the same for the institute which conduct all the biodiversity research and they need to work also in some maintenance and also from the forest inventory about wood products and no wood products which people can use in all the forest management plan so the actions need to incorporate and integrate all the objectives from all the different environmental institutions so I think that one of the main activities and lessons learned from this experience was a political will political commitment I think the national government make all the environmental policy but to implement this environmental policy and specific the forest policy in each region of the country in its environmental authority in the regional areas it's one of the challenge in this regulatory activities another one is the priority of the national development plan so we have a national policy but this policy is not into the national development plan so that policy is not going to be implemented so we need that each goal each objective this action and activity need to be included into the national development plan so the government here in Colombia is going to be changed each third year so we need that the national development plan will be incorporate all the political about forest management I'm sorry today there are a lot of plane traffic close to our office okay and the third lesson is to recognition of forest as a some means of environmental social and economic sustainability I think we need to to determine that forest is a natural capital so we have a very important natural resources in Colombia we are as to now in tropical areas we have a approximated 50 percent of area our forest in Colombia so we need to implement very good principles very good action in order to use management and conserve all the forest and we need to know that in all the forest we have black people indigenous people and community in local areas that they depend on the forest so we need to start with very good rules in order to use in adequate forms the forest implement specific criteria for the sustainability of the forest and this activities need to be in the the consciousness and the awareness of the people and people need to know that the forest need to conserve it but also we can use it in a very good way so I think this street companies is the main lesson that we are from this regulatory process thanks so much Hector I think we've got time maybe for one last question I'll give it to Bob if that's all right Bob in your presentation and to me one of the main takeaways key takeaway perhaps was on was data sharing a topic that's becoming increasingly important particularly in light of the enhanced transparency framework could you briefly explain why data sharing is important for Uganda what benefits can accrue and if relevant what are the pitfalls to be avoided thank you thank you very much indeed data sharing is very important then for Uganda just like it is for other countries because depending on with whom or for what we are sharing the data if we look at the UNFCCC reporting that is also a data sharing of sorts if I may is that example and when we report results like we did report results in April 2020 when we delivered the technical annexed today by annual update report we've received many many requests and collaborations with many institutions but private sector like Microsoft you know to see whether we can look at the ad standard we've we've also received a lot of other engagements with UN red got interested in the data in the results that we submitted and and right now we're working on how can we if there are any gaps with our data how can we make sure we fix them as quickly as possible so that the country can now start benefiting from results based payments but that is one global and major a benefit for us to be able to freely share our data and allow you know experts globally to have a look and critique where possible and provide an input into and ask some questions or that's part of transparency about the data that we've we've shared so that is one very important but also within the country it enhances our you know raise the profile of the forest sector if we're able to share information and when we do share information freely the people who make decisions like the people in the parliament of Uganda the cabinet and the others will be able to see that there is one that is being done as a country to respond to you know the climate change questions or requirements for us to to report as a country but also a national then it helps us to be able to use the same data as we have used it actually to develop what we call the natural accounting capital accounting system accounting system for forest for example we used information that we had in the forest sector which we believe if we were hesitant to share with the experts who were computing the capital accounts then would have missed out on the opportunity for forestry this contribution to the GDP to be known by the people who made decisions in responding to our request for financing so we it has raised our profile in the ministry of finance for example because now it knows how much exactly we make a contribution to the national the GDP the cross domestic product of the country and because of that then we have found resources additional resources coming to the forest sector in the recent past because of the fact that we're able to freely share that information. Emil just remind me of the last part of the question it was just about the pitfalls Bob if there's any pitfalls associated with data sharing I think one of the issues which is very critical is that we are not able to collect all the data that we need really it's a it's a challenge to be able and that's why we're looking forward to the data sharing program but two is very expensive much as we want to share information but let me give an example of activity data every year it's very expensive for us to be able to collect activity, activity data and annual basis so we use awaited averages for a certain period which is allowed by ABCC standards but it's they're not give a very good you know especially a response to especially the person who wants to pay a coin to you know for the carbon sequester by Uganda so that's some of the things that we're trying to so much as we want to share information very well but there are some gaps that actually very expensive to fix and we're trying to apply some resources to be able to fix some of those the gaps with the data especially annual activity data so that we're able to deliver the results that you know the private sector that is willing to work to engage the country pay for you know for the pay for resource will be comfortable with so those are the two main main elements the others things that we were able to sort out immediately internally here thank you very much thank you Bob thanks for explaining that and giving us some illustrations and examples that makes it much easier to imagine and understand what's going what's going on that's fantastic I think we're almost ready to wrap up so I want to thank everyone for your engagement and hopefully we managed to answer most of the questions that were in the Q&A box I think we've managed about two thirds and the ones that we haven't we will get around to all questions in a follow-up along with the recording as soon as we can I know I wanted to see if we could try and watch the video again together there were some audio problems before maybe we give it another go before closing okay thank you everyone I think there were still some audio problems for some people I could hear it and some of my colleagues could but for those that couldn't that will be that is available already on YouTube and the link to that's been shared in the chat so you can watch that on your own time sorry about that again though and with that I'm going to hand over now to Julian Fox Julian is the team leader here at the National Forest Monitoring team at FAO he will give us some closing remarks thanks for being here today Julian over to you thank you Emily and thank you so much to the panelists for the engaging presentations and discussions and special thanks to Hector and Bob for bringing these really important country examples from Colombia and Uganda respectively for forest data FAO starting point is the voluntary guidelines for national forest monitoring which advocates for multi purpose NFMS I encourage you all to use the publication and it's great to see the NFMS for Colombia and Uganda are truly multi purpose that's just wonderful so we identified several years ago that greater attention was needed toward institutionalization of national forest monitoring systems through legal frameworks and it is so great today that with support from UN Red and Sibet Forest we host this webinar to highlight the topic and also launch a technical publication with guidance on how countries can address this need and thank you so much to Francesca Fallakani for being a true pioneer on this topic and helping helping us deliver this important material today so as has been discussed and is really clear the institutionalization of forest data through legal frameworks is critically important having a national forest monitoring system legally embedded in government structures can ensure sustainability and national ownership of the system and ensures the critical multi-purpose functions it supports such as national forest and land management decision and policy making and reporting functions such as for red plus and for reporting against the enhanced transparency framework at the Paris agreement clarified roles and responsibilities among government departments and ministries at the national level and clear data sharing agreements can ensure that national forest monitoring systems function and fulfill their critical purpose. Now it is the time to follow the guidance provided in the new publication and launch today and replicate the case studies and the wonderful examples provided today by Columbia and Uganda who also outlined some of their challenges this can ensure that our efforts are sustainable, catalytic and enable much needed action for forest and climate. I also see two new opportunities to build on institutionalized NFMS the first one it is the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration this just commenced this year and it's really a decade of action to restore the greater ecosystems and prevent and halt deforestation and degradation of existing ecosystems my team is working on a global framework for monitoring the decade what we are calling the framework for ecosystem restoration monitoring and our vision is that we build on existing national forest monitoring systems using existing legal and institutional frameworks for the function of restoration monitoring I mean restoration monitoring is a natural multi-purpose function of an NFMS and we are working on a technical publication linking NFMS to restoration monitoring which we hope to launch on World Environment Day on the 5th of June which is the official launch of the UN Decade. My second opportunity that's present right now is the is the technology and innovation we see you know new powerful data streams becoming available um one exciting example is the new high resolution monthly basemaps purchased by Nikfi of Norway available for 64 tropical countries it is important for countries to consider and explore how these new data can strengthen and contribute to elements of their existing national forest monitoring system how they can complement the existing data sources of the NFMS and how they can be integrated into institutional structures one clear application is to improve the spatial and temporal resolution of reference data collection which is critical for sample-based approaches such as stratified area estimation as well as map creation map accuracy assessment and for degradation monitoring from FAO and in collaboration with technical partners we will create some technical notes on how countries can integrate new data streams such as the Nikfi basemaps into their national forest monitoring systems in my closing comments I would like to convey we've seen that higher levels of sustainability and transparency in forest monitoring are facilitating higher levels of ambition and this is really exciting I mean our vision is that transparent reliable relevant accessible and sustainable national forest monitoring systems can support climate action on the ground continuous improvement and strengthening of these systems can support higher levels of action and ambition which is so desperately needed at this critical moment for humanity thank you very much for your valuable time thank you again to all the presenters and have a fantastic day signing off from FAO maybe back to you Emily to close out thank you thanks a lot Julian and thanks a lot everyone for participating today and what was a great session certainly in my opinion I want to thank again all our presenters Rocio, Francesca, Bob and Hector and also Julian thanks so much everyone for attending bye thank you thank you very much let me just give a last few words as many of you asked the recording of today's webinar together with the Q&A and all the PowerPoint presentations will be made available at the link that we provided in the chat and that we will send again via email to each of you so we also prepared that list of all forestry related courses that are free of charge always available through the FAO Learning Academy so if we invite you to have a look we will share the link with you again also the course on forest and transparency under the Paris Agreement is the last one that we published also in Chinese and in other languages so please have a look thanks again to all of you participants panelists thank you very much for attending this session we will make available the recording in the upcoming days and send it to you thanks a lot and wishing a good day good evening to all of you