Guidance for Implementation of National Forests Monitoring Systems KENYA MGD Session Sydney, Australia March 4 th – 6 th 2015

Methods and Guidance Needs Guides used for planning and designing the National Forest Monitoring System (NFMS) 1.Identification of relevant stakeholders/institutions and their roles e.g. Forest Service, DRSRS, SoK, Universities 2.Development of definitions e.g. What is a forestland, doe the definition allow a sustained monitoring? Does the definition adequately cover the forest sector? 3.Forest stratification based carbon stock/carbon dynamics and ease of measurement. Is stratification best due to dynamics or existing stocks? 4.Linking to national strategies e.g. NCCRS, Forest Act, Constitution 2010, Vision 2030 MGD Session Sydney, Australia March 4 th – 6 th 2015

Methods and Guidance Needs 5.Identification of tools and methods e.g. the pixel based approach for land cover change detection and use of open source software 6.Choice of remote sensing data and methods that allow time series analysis and consistency e.g. preference for Landsat 7.Guidance on activity data requirements to support MRV design decisions e.g. what is attributed to land use change?, what are the emission factors associated with the attributions? MGD Session Sydney, Australia March 4 th – 6 th 2015

MGD booklet was distributed to relevant institutions The MGD has been used as a reference document in SLEEK implementation by the forest and land cover change working groups. Also in the ICFRA biomass data collection manuals We have the opportunity to use the MGD to evaluate findings of old research that will be used by SLEEK e.g. Soil carbon research, Forest biomass Research, There is need for institutional capacity building targeting the technical staff - the second version of the MGD could provide these critical skills Understanding of the GFOI MGD document SDCG-7 Sydney, Australia March 4 th – 6 th 2015

Challenges and obstacles for applying guidance while designing the NFMS SDCG-7 Sydney, Australia March 4 th – 6 th 2015 Good document for overall guidance to the Working Groups Would be great for document to include additional tools, modules and step by step instructions that could be used by the technical staff to develop the national system design Need to explore additional training opportunities for the technical people to effectively implement the guidelines in the MGD Lack of some of the critical data in Kenya to allow complete adoption of MGD – we are the process of generating the data

Lessons learnt 1.The forest monitoring system should be based on: Sustainability – a method that can be sustained over time to provide time series information about forests. None of the traditional methods have allowed sustainability Cost effective – a method that is easy to implement and maintain for a wall-wall forest monitoring Representative of the national circumstances – Kenya forests vary by climate, altitude, and management and the method should capture such variations Ability to conform with international guidelines – this allows us to meet international reporting guidelines 2. Institutional arrangement and capacity building is very important for the development of the National MRV – training, infrastructure, policies etc SDCG-7 Sydney, Australia March 4 th – 6 th