Developed with funding from NASA’s SERVIR program and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, The Forest Conservation Targeting Tool (FCTT) and the Forest Conservation Evaluation Tool (FCET) are freely available webtools for planning and evaluating tropical forest conservation policy in Latin America. They are non-technical and easy to use—each has all requisite data, instructions, and metadata on-board. Users can also upload their own data to complement or replace the on-board data.
Forest Conservation Targeting Tool
The FCTT identifies “hotspots” where planned forest conservation policies such as protected areas, payments for environmental services, and forest certification generate the greatest conservation bang for the buck. It takes into account spatial variation in deforestation risk, conservation costs, and three forest ecosystem services (carbon storage, provision of biodiversity habitat, and provision of hydrological services), which users can weight as they please. It has been used by The Nature Conservancy to help site conservation investments associated with the $30 million USAID Mexico REDD project and by the Interamerican Development Bank to design improved cook stoves and forest restoration projects in Honduras.
Forest Conservation Evaluation Tool
The FCET evaluates the effectiveness of existing forest conservation policies. It uses Global Forest Watch satellite data to measure deforestation and statistical matching to identify the effects of conservation policies separate from the effects of their siting (often in places with low pre-existing deforestation pressure).