GFOI Capacity Building Summits

These principles seek to facilitate coordination between GFOI’s capacity building partners, while enabling complementarity and ultimately the delivery of targeted support that helps developing countries to improve their national forest monitoring and emissions measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) capabilities. These principles were drafted at the second GFOI Capacity Building Summit held in Nepal in September 2017 with the intention of guiding collaborative capacity building activities under the second phase of GFOI beginning in 2018.

The following list of principles provide recommendations for GFOI Capacity Building partners to use in planning, delivering and monitoring capacity building activities. 

·       National Strategies: GFOI partners are encouraged to support developing countries to utilize national strategies and/or design specifications for their forest     monitoring systems and associated emissions MRV procedures. 

·       Priority needs assessments: countries should be encouraged to regularly (e.g. every two years) assess their priority needs, in the context of their national strategies (above) and communicate these to capacity building partners to guide their engagement. This should include identification of the international requirements they need to meet and any actions they are unable to complete. The use of the GFOI platform REDDcompass is encouraged to help structure these processes.

·       Targeted assistance: capacity building activities should be targeted at identified priority needs. The type of activity selected (e.g. workshop, short course or implementation guidance etc.) should ideally be tailored to best meet the target need.

·       MGD: the Methods and Guidance Document (MGD) should be the basis for all GFOI capacity building activities. This should enable complementarity in partner activities and compliance with the IPCC. 

·       Design and implementation: capacity building partners should seek to provide training to help countries design their own systems and procedures to meet their national needs. This should be complemented with ‘learning by doing’ assistance that subsequently guides countries through implementation. 

·       Indicators: progress in implementation should be measured according indicators taken from the MGD

·       Academia: partners are encouraged to work with universities and other academic institutions to utilize professional teaching expertise and curriculums in their capacity building activities. They should also seek to facilitate partnerships between universities and governments, to pursue sustainable and stable capacity in developing countries. 

·       Inventory of activities: GFOI partners are encouraged to communicate their past, planned and present capacity building activities via the GFOI inventory of activities portal (to be developed).

·       Harmonized work planning: GFOI partners are encouraged to participate in harmonized work planning of their capacity building activities with other partners. This will be a best effort approach which utilizes partners’ own work plans and seeks to identify activities of mutual interest and complementarity, comparative advantages, overlaps and duplication, gaps and opportunities for new collaborations. This may not be applicable for all activities but partners are encouraged to at least clearly communicate their work plans with partners through the GFOI.

·       Data: capacity building partners are encouraged to use and disseminate operational products, datasets and tools of GFOI partners where appropriate. They are also encouraged to communicate any limitations, gaps and suggested improvements back to proponents of these technologies through the GFOI Data Component.

·       R&D: knowledge and technology gaps identified during capacity building activities, should be communicated back to the GFOI R&D Coordination Component to inform new science and research tasks. Similarly, obstacles to progress should be communicated to the R&D Component to consider how the GFOI network of experts can be engaged to develop potential solutions.

·       Solutions exist: GFOI partners should promote the fact that technical solutions for forest monitoring and MRV procedures exist and are no longer insurmountable. They should encourage countries to pursue a structured planning and implementation approach that utilizes available guidance, open source tools, data and methodologies to meet individual country needs and are able to evolve over time.

·       Follow up: all capacity building activities should include a follow up at an appropriate time in the future. This should determine the effectiveness of the assistance delivered and provide additional assistance to help countries realize the full potential of the initial training. This should also allow for M&E procedures.