 Hello and welcome everyone to today's webinar on Forest Data and Transparency. Zoom in on the experience of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. You should see on your screen right now a poll. Please fill us in. This will help us with our statistics, understand our participants for the future. That would be great. Just take a moment. Thank you. I see the number of participants is rapidly growing. Welcome everyone. Almost at 100. So people that have just joined, you should see a poll on your screen. So please just take a moment, fill it in. Hi everyone and welcome to those here newly joining us. Hello. Yeah, if you see the poll on your screen, please just fill that in. That'll help us. Thanks. So the webinar will start in just a few seconds. We're just waiting for more people to join us. We are now at 100 participants. Hello. Hello everyone. Nice to greet you all there in the chat. Hi everyone and for those who have just joined us, please just fill in the poll that should be on your screen right there. And yeah, if you want to also say hello in the chat, you're very welcome to. Hi everyone. Hello and welcome to today's webinar on forest data and transparency zooming in on the experience of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Thank you all for joining us today. It's really nice to see so many people online, especially warm welcome to those here joining us today from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Thank you so much for being here today. The first webinar is the third in a series of webinars revolving around transparency, climate change and forests and how enhancing transparency can be achieved and how achieving this can actually enhance our collective climate action. Two months ago we spoke to colleagues in Costa Rica to learn about their experience and setting up a national forest monitoring system. And today we move across the Atlantic Ocean to zoom in and to speak to colleagues in DRC about their own unique experience in setting up a national forest monitoring system there. It's fantastic to see so many of you online. We're at 126 participants that's great. We're really looking forward to interacting with you all during the moderated Q&A session which will be following our presentations so stick around for that. Today we will hear from Mr. Ramita Nuncio, who is the coordinator for FAO on National Forest Monitoring and Red Plus in Africa. He will give us an overview of the activity in the region. Then we will hear from Ms. Rocio Condor, who is coordinating the global project CBIT Forest, which focuses on strengthening capacities for forest monitoring and transparency. And finally and most importantly, we'll hear directly from DRC from Mr. Benjamin Tochambay, the Secretary General of the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development in DRC, who will tell us about his work and the ongoing experience of the DRC in monitoring its forests. Following these three presentations, we will have a discussion session where we want to hear from you. In total the session will last for one hour. And I think now I will pass over to Christina, my colleague, Christina Petraki. Yes, thank you. Thank you very much, Emily, and welcome everyone to this international technical webinar on forest data transparency. I just wanted to mention that this is one of the various international webinars that we usually organize with Agrinium and with the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for the Pacific. The idea is really to share experiences and to give an opportunity to everyone to have access to this knowledge and really to try to work towards sustainability. In fact, the common thread throughout all the webinars that we have delivered through the FAE Learning Academy, the common thread is always sustainability, of course, in climate change. So I invite you all to have a look at the E-Learning Academy because there are a number of resources and E-Learning courses available for free, also on forest transparency. And you can also access the recording of this webinar afterwards and of all the previous webinars that were conducted. So I hope you will enjoy the program. We had a very tight and very interesting program for you today, and I am extremely pleased to pass the floor to our colleague from FAO that will be talking to us a little bit more about forest transparency. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Christina, for the introduction to the E-Learning Academy. Let me introduce myself as well. My name is Emily Donegan. I work for the National Forest Monitoring Team at FAO and I'll be your moderator for today's session. The Enhanced Transparency Framework is something that has only recently been developed and is yet to fully come into place. So I and perhaps most people on this call today are not experts on this new topic. I'm really excited today to learn all as well about how our country is big and is extensively forested as DRC is managing and monitoring its forests. So now that you know who I am, just, yeah, please feel free to say hi in the chat if you can still access the poll. It'd be great if you could pop in your name and affiliation in there. Just a little quick word there on the format about the format of this Zoom. This is a webinar, so your microphones are muted. However, the session is, as Christina mentioned, all about interacting and hearing from you. So please don't hesitate to pose your questions in the Q&A box, which you will see at the bottom of your screen to each of our speakers. And you can pose your question in either French or English. If someone has already posed a question that interests you, you can give it a thumbs up. And today, my colleague, Anatoly Pultohito, will be helping me select the most appropriate questions for our speakers. So now you will notice that there is both a Q&A box and a chat. So to make it easier for us to find and respond to your questions to the speakers, we do ask you to please keep the questions in the Q&A box. However, if you have any technical problems or general comments, you can please post them in the chat. As well as saying hi to other participants and all of us here as well as you're doing now, that's great. One other important thing to note about today's session is that we have the session being simultaneously translated into French. So in order to switch to the French channel, please use the button at the bottom of your Zoom screen, its interpretation, and then select the language that you want to listen to. So I hope I've given you a good overview of how we're going to spend the next hour and how we can interact together with each other here on the Zoom platform. Without further ado, I'd like to introduce you now to our first speaker. Mr Remy Denuncio from FAL. Remy is a forestry officer and Red Plus and NFM coordinator for Africa. He'll provide us with a general overview of national forest monitoring activities going on in Africa. Thanks for being with us here today Remy, over to you. Thank you very much, Emily. Can you confirm that you can hear me? Yes. Yes, excellent. I will share my screen. Is that all right? Can you see my presentation? I see it, yes. Okay, excellent. Well, thank you very much for giving the floor. My name is Remy Denuncio. I'm a forestry officer in FAL. I'm coordinating the NFM Red Plus work in the Africa region. I'm very happy to welcome you. In particular, Mr Secretary General of the Ministry of Environment and Forests in DRC, Mr Benjamin Remy. And all of you participants to this webinar, it's really exciting to have such a wide audience. I would like, before we go into the Enhanced and Foundry framework and the specific case of DRC, we thought it would be good to give you a very quick glimpse of what FAO is doing in terms of a national forest monitoring system, in particular in the Africa region. As you know, NFMS national forest monitoring systems are an essential elements in the fights for climate change. And what we do in FAO is supporting countries get prepared for that. So let me give you a brief overview of this. And I will talk about forest monitoring and about climate action. Traditionally in FAO, we are supporting countries to set up national forest inventories and national forest monitoring systems. Right now and for the past 10 years, we've had a very strong component on Red Plus and on helping countries set up measurements, reporting and verification system. We also have a very, we have developed a very comprehensive, very complete tools for forest monitoring and assessments. We have helped countries design, build up, implement, analyze their forest inventory data, for instance. And this is really our traditional role, looking at those monitoring elements of a forest. And the data that is being produced within those, within those projects and components are then being reported by the countries to international processes like the UNFJPC or to the forest carbon partnership for the World Bank programs, for instance. It's also being used in the fraud process, the forest resource assessment of FAO, which is updated every five years. We are helping countries to build up those forest monitoring systems and they in turn help us to build more global methodologies that are being used at largest case than just national. So we also have very strong regional components. And we have in particular two projects that are being currently implemented, one in Central Africa with CAFI, the Central African Forest Initiative, and one in West Africa with funding from the Swedish Corporation Agency to look at drivers of deforestation and degradation and understand the dynamics behind those things. The tools that we developed, the framework in which we help countries build up their skill, help us in turn serve a purpose that is larger than just monitoring. We don't monitor just for the purpose of monitoring. Our cluster is trying to turn to in the project that we are developing now and for the next years are really aiming at restoring ecosystems and improving livelihoods that depend on those ecosystems. So very briefly, we have some action on forest ecosystem within the UN Decade of Restoration. For instance, we are paying particular attention to peatland and the fragile ecosystem that it can represent. And we have projects that are across both Congos in Congo and DRC and that is being led by the German initiative climate. Very recently, we had a project on the development of zero deforestation value chains approved by the Green Climate Fund, and we're really happy to start those activities that will be never close. And then we are also paying specific attention to community-based forest. And in the case of DRC, we have integrated programs, for instance, that are being led by CAFI and FONARED. And we are also looking at sustainable forest management led by communities in a whole range of countries in West Africa. So what we really do in FAO is developing tools and we've been paying specific attention to free open source solutions to develop those tools. In particular, we have the open forest initiative that is now almost 10 years, which is kind of mature. And the tools that are inside the initiative range from field work to satellite-based processing tools. And you can see here an example of the direction in DRC, which is using those tools to monitor forests and using near real-time data from satellites to look at deforestation and degradation events. FAO has partnered with Planet, a satellite data provider through funding from Norway, from NICV, the Norway Initiative for Climate, to procure these images. And DRC was one of the pilot countries that have been using this data for the past year. And the contract is now finished, but I'm really, really happy to tell you that today we have really great news that came up just this morning. And that's the example that we drew from this experience, using very, very high-frequency data of satellite imagery to monitor deforestation and degradation, has been scaled up by NICV. And they are now covering the whole tropic area, as you can see here on this little slide. The contract has just been issued and we will have a four-year procurement, a global level of monthly mosaics, really high resolution, which will really help monitor and see any events and any disturbance and take decisions that are related to this. So I'm very excited to tell you about this, and we will probably talk about this later. I think I gave you a very quick glimpse of what we're doing in terms of monitoring, in terms of climate action related to forests. I will now pass the floor to my colleague Rousseau, who will give you an overview of the Siegit Forest and the Enhanced Environment Framework. Thank you very much. Thank you, Rumi, for that overview. Just before passing it to passing the floor to Rousseau, I just wanted to quickly remind everyone to please put any questions for Rumi and any of our other speakers in the Q&A box in the bottom bar and keep your technical questions, or if you have issues in the chat so that we can help you address them. I think that was a really nice overview that you just gave us for me on how forest monitoring relates to climate action and ecosystem restoration, and it's really exciting to see that last slide that you shared that's kind of completely brand new, that's just today, so that's really exciting. I'd now like to pass the floor over to Rousseau Condor. She is coordinating the Global Project, building global capacity to increase transparency in the forest sector, CBIT Forest, of the FAO, financed by the CBIT Trust Fund of the GEF, the Global Environment Facility. She's coordinating activities to make forest data more transparent, accessible and available, and helping developing countries meet the Paris Agreements Enhanced Transparency Framework. The FAO and GEF have been partners for nearly 20 years, and this partnership has been key to addressing critical issues at the intersection of agriculture and the environment. FAO GEF projects currently make up over 20% of the current JAP7 portfolio. The CBIT Trust Fund is one trust fund under the GEF, and the project that you will now hear about from its creator and coordinator, Rousseau, is one of them. So over to you, Rousseau. Thanks for being with us. Thank you very much, Emily, do you hear me? Yeah, loud and clear. Perfect. So thank you very much. Let me know also if you can see the presentation. Yes. Thank you very much, Remy and Emily, also for the introduction, and let me share with you all three key messages. Forests are the largest carbon and biodiversity reservoirs on the earth, and they are essential source of foods, goods and services that are vital to livelihoods of the poorest and rural communities. This plays a central role in combating climate change. Therefore, given the significant potential of forest, improving the transparency of forest related data and information within the enhanced transparency of the Paris Agreement is timely. The Paris Agreement and its call for better and more transparent data are instrumental. How do we ensure that establishing and running a national forest monitoring system constitutes a complex scientific technical exercise and an organizational institutional challenge. Information and knowledge generated by a national forest monitoring system need to feed into and support national and international forest related processes. Therefore, they need to be multi-purpose, implying intersectional communication and coordination. A fully functional multi-purpose national forest monitoring system allows countries to respond to their own forest data needs, as well as reports on forest related emissions and removals. What have we learned in 2020? The COVID-19 pandemic is intensifying data scarcity problems when timely. Reliable information has become even more essential for immediate policy responses and for monitoring national and international development agendas. The COVID-19 has reinforced the importance of data for interpretation and dissemination. Likewise, forest data transparency is key to supporting higher levels of ambition for the roles of forest in climate change action. How is FAO contributing to the efforts towards the implementation of the transparency framework under the Paris Agreement? There are two global projects. FAO has CBIT AFOLU project and also CBIT Forest, and I will talk these in these coming slides. Building global capacity to increase transparency in the forest sector, CBIT Forest, is a two-year project of the FAO financed by the Capacity Building Initiative for Transparency Trust Fund of the Global Environment Facility. Aiming to strengthen the institutional and technical capacities of developing countries to collect, analyze, disseminate forest related data. CBIT Forest build on already existing efforts of the FAO to support countries on forest monitoring at global and national levels. How? Organizing sub-regional and national workshops to build capacities and enhance their national forest monitoring systems. Track and T6 countries targeted as well as 187 countries and territories included as part of the global network of the national correspondents for the Global Forest Resource Assessment Fra. Strengthening the network of key partners such as the UNFCCC and the Global Forest Observation Initiative as well as other UN agencies such as UNEP and UNDP. By seeking cooperation to work on products or activities of the project. Upgrading FAO's Fra 2020 reporting and dissemination platform to make forest data reporting easier in the future. And this platform has just been released on the 21st of July with a series of key resources including the Fra 2020 main report and the 236 detailed reports of all countries and territories. Developing also knowledge and training material including the e-learning course released on the 15th of July to enable access to knowledge about the enhanced transparency framework and forest to anyone anywhere. Building and maintaining continuous awareness of the project and sharing cases studies in multiple language on forests and transparency being the Democratic Republic of the Congo the second after Costa Rica. Developing a spreadsheet based tool to facilitate the assessment of gaps and needs in countries national forest monitoring system. And let me focus in my next slides on the new products we have developed. So we have the poster in multiple languages of the project. We have the case study of Costa Rica already launched and today we have the we will be presenting the case study from DRC. Let me briefly introduce some key information of that national forest monitoring system assessment tool and new related products. The NFMS assessment tool aimed to assist countries in strengthening their NFMS by facilitating understanding of fouls voluntary guidance on national forest monitoring. Identifying needs and gaps as well as helping to build work plans and measure progress. Then if MS assessment tool is available in the new e-learning course on forest and transparent under the Paris agreement. The course can be taken online or download. Here you have the lessons of the learning course. And in lesson two, you can access to the NFMS assessment tool, which is already available in three languages, English, French and Spanish. Some support material I would like to share with you. Today, we are also presenting a new product, which is the quick guidance. Soon also available in multiple languages. As well as then short information notes. I thank you very much for your attention and it's back to you, Emily. Thanks. Thank you so much for sharing this material with us and giving us a bit of a background on the development since the Paris agreement towards the enhanced transparency framework. And helping us understand how forest monitoring fits in there and what it will mean in practice. Now we're about to hear from DRC, a country that is already putting into practice a national forest monitoring system that is functional and transparent. From DRC today, we have Mr Benjamin Torrembay, who is the Secretary General at the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He coordinates the conception and elaboration of policies, strategies and programs in DRC, a country which is one of the largest extensive forests in the world. He is specialized in both ecology and in plant and wood biology from the universities of Kizangani in the DRC and Ghent in Belgium. Since 1991, he's held several positions of responsibility in various fields, including nature conservation and red plus. And since 2002, he's been working as university teacher and as a national and international expert with several organizations. And he took on the role as Secretary General of the Ministry in 2017. So I just wanted to briefly remind everyone as well before that if you don't understand French, please switch into the interpretation channel down below. Thank you. So thank you very much, Mr Torrembay, for being here with us online today. The floor is yours. Can you hear me okay, Mr Torrembay? And if so, then please just start your presentation. Thanks. Thank you very much, dear friends. Now I would like to share with you what we have done in the framework of the National Forest Rescue Project to promote the sustainable management of forests. To begin with, I would like to thank everyone who has come to follow us through this video conference. I'm starting with the context and the problem of why we are involved in these projects. In terms of context, let's say that there is a need to reduce emissions from deforestation and deforestation of forests. All this simply because these are the strategic priorities of our country, the Democratic Republic of Congo. With the technical capacity limited to the country, these necessary tools have been produced in accordance with forestry and these changes. And also to make relative political decisions in reducing the resulting emissions of deforestation and deforestation of forests and the sustainable management of forest resources. In terms of objectives, improving the proactive follow-up of deforestation and deforestation of forests, thanks to a solid forest follow-up system, the national capacity has been reinforced following deforestation and deforestation of forest and deforestation of all the relevant and permanent parts. To provide essential training to the country in order to fulfil the requirements of national and international notifications at the UN Convention on Climate Change. To support the government of our country in taking decisions and to develop policies related to use and the occupation of land and material resources at environmental level, and finally to produce high-quality data that is reliable to follow the changes of use and occupation of land and forestry. In terms of methodological approaches in the framework of these projects, there are also components of these systems, namely the national forestry inventory, the system of land surveillance by satellite, and the gas inventory has been made. It is here to note that each of these components that I am going to animate uses a specific methodology designed and adapted to national circumstances. The photo that you see here, it is a method based mainly on national inventories and it is used more to measure the trees. What are the actors and the leading parties? The forest forestry system of the RDC is set up by the General Secretary at the Environment and Development of RAB through the direction of development of RAB with regard to the national inventory component of greenhouse gases and the direction of the inventory and forestry management for the national forestry inventory and forestry surveillance by satellite. In terms of current parties, I must say that the RDC in these systems is supported by many national and international parties. In a few cities, I can mention the IFAO, our technical partner on the ground, the GICAN, the same thing, the American Forestry Service, the UNG International, especially WCS, WWF and WRI. There are also its leading parties, there are universities such as the University of Rumbashi and the University of Kisangani. There is also the satellite observatory which also supports us in these processes. And there you see a photo which was taken at the end of information on statistical analysis of forested inventory by the University of Kisangani and the University of Rumbashi. In terms of hidden results, we can say that there is a place and a technical consultation platform that guarantees a better coordination between partner and administration of the environment and the environment. There is the reinforcement of technical capabilities of the functional sources of the administration, especially the implementation of the inventory of the IFAO, the planning and management of forested inventory, the acquisition and treatment of satellite images and the establishment of a first level of reference for forests. The establishment of a system followed by satellite for spatial development of integrated commercial plantations to the national system of forest services in our country. There is a network of sharing knowledge on these systems between our country and the Burkina Faso, the Cameroon, the Republic of Congo, the river of the Voire and the Madagascar and the establishment of a portal that allows the building of information on the national forest services system, etc. This image shows a little bit the web of the 10 national forest services systems that have been the results of the service by satellite and the service by satellite. What are the success factors? There are several, but we are going to talk about three. First, there is a term of approach for foresters and that is the national forest fund that acts as a financial vehicle for the implementation of the national forest strategy. There are also debate processes participating in these processes through the technical platform of concentration, PTS. PTS is a platform for technical sharing of related issues to the national forest services system. And in fact, there are several institutions as I said before, and organizations that have supported the concept and the implementation of these systems, especially the research centers, National and International UNJs such as WVCS, WVWF, WVRI, the observatory of the Central Forests. The Japanese International Cooperation Agency, the Forest Service of the United States and the Research Institute for the Development of France. In these systems and in the implementation of these systems, there have been several difficulties, but our numbers are a little over four that we find relevant. First, there are many questions of the coherence of methodologies by the different technical partners of the UNJs. Second, there is the communication of the national forest services that are different from each other without referring to the data provided by the public administration of our country. The level of methodological appropriation is technical by the national experts is very limited, especially in the components of the services and systems followed by the Earth, by the satellite and the national forested inventory. And finally, the insecurity in certain areas of the country for forested inventory, etc. The challenges have been raised. The first thing we will address is the guarantee of reliability and the operational maintenance of the system, the availability of funding and finally the coordination of the national forest services particularly the related questions of the harmonization of methodologies and the appropriation of the process at the provincial level. So, in relation to the results that we have obtained, is it possible that there is a replica of everything that we have done in this system? We will answer yes, simply because the experience and the achievements of the system and the follow-up of the Earth by satellite in our country and also the team of experts in tele-detection and in the management of the computer and guaranteeing the reliability in terms of skills, of data and maintenance to serve as a basis for a replication process in other countries and in the same context for the management of the massif forestry. You can see these images on my left at the top, you can see the governor of the province there who exchanged a video conference with the SNSF platform here in Kichesson. You can see on my left the civilization of the communities before the forestry inventors in the upper Katanga. The civilization of women especially young people and children in these processes. The marking of the trees for the zalometric equations. The use of earth leaders always for the zalometric equations. The preservation of trees also for the zalometric equations. The measurements of fresh densities on the ground always for the zalometric equations. The learnings of DIAF and the University of Bumbashi work together always for the zalometric equations. I finish my remarks. We thank first the National University and the research centers the different bilateral cooperation especially the international cooperation of Japan, forest services of the United States, research institutes for the development of France, the FAO, the observatory of the forests of Central Africa, the international cooperation, especially WVCS, WVWF, WRI, etc. If I may, I would like to thank you once again for your listening and we are here to respond to your questions. Thank you. I think now that Mr. is back online and I'd really like to thank him for giving this insight into the experience gained in DRC of the process of setting up a national forest monitoring system including the difficulties faced and the results obtained so far. Now it's time for the Q&A session some discussion and please everyone don't hesitate to write your questions in the Q&A box and we'll do your best to get round to them. I'd like to start with a question to Mr. So the CPIT as its name suggests aims to build national capacities and acts to improve elements of the NFM system including institutional elements and technical and human capacity needs. You showed a slide in your presentation a photo of a group of people who had just completed a training and I've read that in DRC recently over 50 staff have been trained on land cover change detection including on field data collection cutting edge activities such as the web portal you showed us in your presentation and using high resolution satellite images for detecting forest degradation and monitoring peatlands. So my question then to you is why is capacity building something that is integral to the functioning of such a system? Can you share with us some of the main lessons learned from the capacity development activities in DRC and you also mentioned how the experience of DRC is being shared with other countries in the Congo Basin and beyond could you tell me a bit more about how DRC as a country was such a huge and diverse area of forest of global importance in terms of climate regulation and biodiversity as well as a host of other reasons can ensure its experiences and positive steps extend beyond its borders leading the potential for upscaling over to you Mr. Tuarambay Do we still have Mr. Tuarambay online? Can someone confirm? I see him online but probably he's having some issues with his connectivity. Okay Okay then in that case sorry everyone I will move on to the second second question that I have in the hope that Mr. Tuarambay can join us hopefully later in the session so my question is now to Remy as someone with valuable experience working in the wider region to tell us more about initiatives in other countries could you tell us a little bit more about scaling up the work done in forest monitoring in DRC Remy to the region the sub region and beyond thanks. Can you hear me? Yes hi Remy Okay sorry I think Mr. Tuarambay has a problem with his connection and he's with another person who has access but who can't get inside so if we could move Remy as a speaker that would be great. Anyway sorry I'm just coming back to your question Remy Yes what we're doing at national level can get scaled up actually all the all the efforts we are doing at national level help us learn lessons and build up Can you hear me? Mr. Secretary General Yes we can hear you That's it for the first question of strengthening capacity I think as she explained to me Mrs. Mehmedie we have a great surface of the forest so a great extended forest so it requires more capacity we know that there are a lot of young people who are trained but it's both academic training and they are very important but on the field we have to strengthen capacity on the field but today with this system at first it wasn't that easy because the images we used at the time had for example a lot of water and today with the space at high resolution so we go a little bit to other technologies for other technologies so we had to focus on strengthening capacity on the field I thank all the partners who helped us to accompany the work in a operational way and our national forest service system and that's all with the application of everyone and that's all of all the partners so also in the strengthening of capacity and in consultation with other partners we even managed to have the reference level which was even published at the Convention of Nations on Climate Change the strengthening of capacity also helped to harmonize the methodologies used for example in forest inventories in the geomatics in the inventories of greenhouse gases the strengthening of capacity helps us today to follow the same conformity of data that was invented at the time this strengthening capacity really helped us a lot it helped us a lot the three components to have the elements that can defend that can produce reliable data and today I can tell you that RDC with the the partnership to produce data that's all that's all for this question the elements of the answers that I could answer thank you very much thank you very much Mr. Toambé for highlighting oh I am in the wrong language channel I was hearing myself being translated so yes thank you very much for highlighting the importance of developing capacities also in order to develop lessons learned that can be drawn upon by neighbouring countries and anyone anywhere involved in forest monitoring so thank you very much for jumping in there and answering your question I'll pass the floor back to Remy I can repeat the question for Remy which was about similar question about scaling up the work done in forest monitoring in the DRC to the sub region and beyond over to you Remy thank you Remy I was just saying that south house cooperation is really essential we've been favouring those exchanges so that experience shared by countries lessons learned in exercises in countries can be taken and can help build better initiatives and as I mentioned during the presentation we have been preparing NFIs and NFMS for a lot of countries not only throughout the traditional NFMA but also with a huge impact on the Red Cross program and those past it's more than two decades that we've been helping set up NFIs and related data and we now have very mature, very robust methodologies that can be scaled up especially using all the possibilities of internet and cloud computing platform so everything that's related to mapping and satellite image analysis for instance can now be done in a very large case with tools that are easily handled by national experts as the secretary just to give two examples we have two projects at the moment one in Central Africa funded by CAFI that we look at drivers of deforestation degradation using those cloud computing tools and and using the information from the NFMS from each of those countries to understand and to tailor exactly the focus on the drivers and we will be doing something extremely similar in West Africa focusing on the eco-west region so yeah it's really important and the experience from countries help us build those robust methodologies there are things that cannot be harmonized but and it's always complex when it is definitions for instance but for the tools to monitor we can really now say that we have tools that can enable these large scale regional initiatives and this is what we're pushing for Thanks a lot Remy speaking of refining national forest monitoring systems I have a question now for Rocio Rocio your presentation briefly touched on the new tool to assess forest monitoring systems based on the voluntary guidelines on national forest monitoring the tool is intended to help prioritize actions for improving NFMS and no doubt helping countries collect, analyse and disseminate forest related data and therefore in preparing to respond to the transparency framework under the Paris Agreement I was wondering would you be able to elaborate a little bit more on how the tool can help DRC and other countries in general and discuss some of the advantages of open data why do we need to move towards open data and increase transparency, why is it so important now to talk about open data over to Rocio Thank you very much Emily and well I have to say that the tool facilitates as mentioned the identification of needs and gaps in order to establish or strengthen the national forest monitoring system so it's very comprehensive assessment that can be carried out and of course this tool complements very much the series of free open source tools that FAO has developed such as the open forest and the CPL which facilitates data collection analysis and reporting COVID-19 has increased awareness about the power of data sharing we hope that this motivates government and forest monitoring practitioners to share for its data and at the same time it's important that open databases follow standards to minimize misuse and misinterpretation we believe that open forest data can strengthen our collective effort to identify and apply solutions for forests in this context of course the national forest monitoring system a robust one a sustainable one that is transparent reliable relevant accessible can support climate action on the ground. Back to you Emily thank you Thanks a lot Rocio similarly to open data one other thing that the tool can be used for is like as a springboard for collaboration because it can bring together various stakeholders in an exercise of evaluation and work planning and I think this is a valuable aspect as well of the tool and one which I think relates to the experience of DRC where a significant success factor as highlighted during the presentation during the creation of DRC's national forest monitoring system was on top of being its participatory nature as highlighted by Mr. Tuareg and there the design and implementation have been supported by a range of participants including universities, NGOs government agencies this was all mentioned in the presentation I think that has helped to make it a truly useful system with applications not just in red plus but also forest management and land monitoring in general relating to agriculture as well and land use planning so I was hoping to ask another question to Mr. Tuareg if you are able to connect again this time hopefully could you share your experiences of the participatory process did it lead to better collaboration on other issues and were there sometimes difficulties maybe to take into consideration everyone's needs thanks over to you sorry to interrupt maybe you want to make sure that Mr. Tuareg is in the off in the main room so he has to click on off in the presentation but Mr. General Secretary would you like to put on the interpretation channel off what you are on French is a little planet you have to click on off we hear you but you are a little far I do not know if you are yes it's good Emilie yes it's okay the forest forest forest systems in our country it was an important element important simply because even since we had developed our law we have privileged the participatory approach in the management of forest forest reasons for which even in the in the wild in the wild in the framework of the forest process we have to include all the relevant parties whether it is in the elaboration of the methodology because the capacities today they are not only in the demonstration but you find there are capacities at the level of civil society at the level of some actors that for example universities because today with the contributions of universities there is teaching there is research so all these capacities must be called to contribute to these systems reasons for which we have called to all these capacities to work together that is to say we have put a collaboration system between all the structures that could bring something to respond to the management of forest forest and especially to the elaboration of our national forest forest forest system and that's a little bit the cliché it's from the law of forestry until now so next I want to give you an example of forestry sometimes you are in a forest in the forest of Okatanga for example the inventory and forestry teams suspect that they are searchers of mines and you have problems but if you don't explain things well to the chief that you put in place you have problems to do work on the ground so you have to start calling everyone to explain to make them understand that this system is for the good management of forestry that we have and the rest is very good so that's a little bit for us the most important elements that brought us to work and to use these systems of the participation of all the present parties in our national forest forest forest system thank you Mr. Tuareme for highlighting yet again the fundamental importance of capacity building and collaboration with research and academia and really developing a fully functional monitoring system that incorporates the needs of many stakeholders to deliver information for multiple purposes you mentioned the collaboration with universities in your presentation and I know that so many people right now who have just started or just about to start to return to university or begin university or school and they're facing considerable uncertainty about how they will be able to continue their learning paths and studies in the face of this pandemic and I know that the CBIT forest project was originally intended to have many face to face events all of which had to be cancelled like most other events due to the outbreak of COVID-19 so I was hoping to Rocio would you be able to share with us your experience of having to very quickly adapt your capacity building approach to the sudden crisis shifting from face to face events to developing online webinars like this one and also the e-learning materials that you mentioned what did you have to change and moving forward which aspects have you found valuable and will keep up thank you very much Emily the global pandemic caused the cancellation of face to face capacity development activities which at the same time stimulated and rapidly accelerated chief tower an effective distance learning paths it also encourages to diversify delivery solution that ensures the transfer of know-how knowledge skill and competencies through different methodologies and I would like to thank that also to the file and Academy and the team of Christina because we are working together on different products which includes the self-paced learning that I just presented the international technical webinars we are running online workshops as well as an upcoming massive open online course that will be held at the end of November of this year so I think we have tried to do our best to adapt to this situation however let me highlight that what made this possible is not only organizational adaptation to these new conditions but also the ability and willingness of the audience to take advantage of learning tools back to you Emily thanks thanks a lot Rocio, yeah for me relating to this last point about the current pandemic and the new approaches and ways of working including zoom like we are right now that many of us are currently navigating would you be able to tell us a little bit about how technology and cloud computing because I know that you are an expert in these topics can help countries monitor land cover and how this is helping now during the pandemic yeah thanks Emily yeah I've seen quite a couple of questions in the chat that are related to this one thing that is really important is that the cloud computing platform and cloud computing tools that exist are very powerful but they can be complicated to use they are based on codes and what we have done in FAO through the open forest initiative and in particular the SEPAL platform I will put the links to those tools in the chat later can really easily enable people to access those tools and computing power and because it's working online because it's working on distance servers you don't need to have a strong connection to download data you don't need to have a strong bandwidth to get those huge amount of data that are available out there you actually use those platforms to on the cloud process the data make it run on distance servers which are really powerful and you only download the easier results and this has been extremely well illustrated during the pandemic by DRC itself as Secretary General mentioned the DRF managed to do a full mapping of deforestation and degradation events during the period 2016-2018 and this is an update of its national forest data set during the pandemic people were using the cloud computing platforms from home and they actually managed to finish the month of August and this tool in turn will now be used for validation and I'm referring back to one of the questions in the chat which is regarding the frequency which we can monitor those events the data that will be made available in the document is monthly and we will have monthly cloud frameworks extremely high resolution so we'll be in a position to monitor any of those events that are happening and we'll be able to validate and see what's happening behind and there was also a question that was asking what financial partners can do to improve the capabilities of countries to monitor their forests this is exactly the kind of data that can really leverage the difference because you don't need to go to the fields to be able to monitor those things you can actually work extremely quickly in a very robust manner to get some crucial information that can be used for decision making and for introduction thank you thanks a lot Rumi, also for that some recent good news that's really really innovative and really great that they were able to map the environment during the pandemic it's a degradation is particularly tricky to detect and even more so to monitor and it's pretty inspiring work done in a really short time and under at first circumstances under the lockdown and it's something that will contribute to a better estimation of emissions from DRC's forests and along with the national forest monitoring system as a whole which I really enjoyed learning about today it's going to contribute ultimately to clear more significant reporting for more ambitious climate action hopefully and I think that's a good point to end on I think so I will hand over now to Mr Julian Fox the leader of FAO's team supporting national forest monitoring and he's going to give us some concluding remarks thanks for being here today Julian over to you thanks so much Emily thanks so much everybody for joining us in this brave new world of virtual seminars thank you secretary general well FAO is honored to accompany countries and forest stakeholders on their journey toward more transparent forest data that is essential for the Paris Agreement the forest data FAO's starting point is the voluntary guidelines for national forest monitoring which advocates for multi-purpose national forest monitoring systems and I encourage you to use this publication which is now also becoming integrated into the NFMS assessment tool developed under the SIPPET forest project as has been said FAO has developed innovative platforms to support countries like DRC on forest monitoring such as open forest and SEPAL we're really proud that SEPAL has been catalytic in enabling national forest monitoring data generation for deforestation and degradation in DRC even through the COVID-19 pandemic exciting news today is the announcement of new monthly cloud-free high-resolution imagery for all tropical countries from the Norwegian international climate and forest initiative this is particularly relevant for countries like DRC with persistent cloud cover and can advance our efforts to measure, monitor and report forests FAO looks forward to integrating this new data into our geospatial platform such as SEPAL and supporting countries in making maximum use of this incredible resource the national forest monitoring system of DRC is an excellent example of a multi-purpose system supporting both data provision for reporting and supporting national needs for decision making and land management I would like to highlight four key elements of the DRC system from which other countries can learn it provides transparent, reliable and credible data that key data provision function for international reporting for measurement reporting and verification other reporting needs and now transition into the enhanced transparency framework of the Paris Agreement DRC did this by developing protocols, methodologies and tools to standardize and ensure the quality, comparability and compatibility of the information provided secondly if a DRC makes data accessible to both national and international state through the development of a national web portal demonstrated by the Secretary-General today this includes geospatial data, documentation and actually everything a stakeholder could desire this is essential particularly for national stakeholders as well as the international community who follow DRC's progress the development of DRC's national forest monitoring system has been highly participatory inclusive of a range of stakeholders such as universities civil society relevant government agencies regional and international organizations such as FAO it produces relevant data for multiple needs it has key functions to provide data that is relevant to forest and land management in DRC with cross sectoral integration another key feature is key roles and responsibilities for the NFMS which ensures sustainability in DRC the NFMS has been institutionalized out of official government structure in summary as FAO we are honored to support DRC and other key forest countries on the continuous improvement of their national forest monitoring systems and we are very pleased to share this example of DRC's system we hope this can trigger south south and triangulate cooperation between DRC and other countries my closing comment I would like to convey that higher levels of transparency can facilitate higher levels of ambition our shared vision is that transparent, reliable, relevant accessible and sustainable forest data can support climate action on ground and as we have seen here today in DRC continuous improvement can then support high levels of ambition which is so desperately needed at this critical moment in our history thank you very much for your valuable time today and for sharing with us through as always some technical glitches but I'm really pleased and I think the technical messages come across and thank you so much to DRC for taking the time to share your experience have a fantastic day and back to Emily to bid everyone a fair day and thank you again thanks so much Julian for your summary drawing on the key strengths and points of interest in DRC's national forest monitoring system and for emphasizing what it's all about really that is transparent data for better management of forests to better help us limit climate change so I would like to give a big thank you to Julian, Reseo, Ramee Christina and especially to Mr. Tuaron Bay for joining us today here on zoom and to of course everyone else who helped organize and of course to all of you for participating today thank you so much I've noticed there are lots of questions in the Q&A box and we've done our best to respond to these we've gotten through about 50% I think sorry that we haven't managed to get through all of them thank you for the engagement and asking all the questions we will respond to all questions in a follow-up email and we will be sharing also the recording of this event so thank you all so much for your valuable interaction and contribution to the dialogue we wish you all a great day and take care of yourselves bye bye everyone thank you bye bye bye thank you everybody thank you thank you bye bye bye