30 September 2015: In a blog post for ‘Forests news,’ Peter Holmgren, Director General of the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), discusses the validity of country-level data from global forest assessments.

In the context of current political commitments that aim to “end deforestation” or “halt natural forest loss” in the next decade – made within the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGS), the New York Declaration on Forests and decisions by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – Holmgren questions the reference point against which progress towards these targets should be measured and whether the right processes to deliver accurate measurements are in place.

He looks at data from 29 countries that represent about 85% of the world’s forests and shows, through concrete examples, how differences in methods, definitions, completeness and field verifications lead to entirely incomparable results between the findings of the Global Forest Watch (GFW) and the FAO Global Forest Resources Assessment (FRA).

Holmgren goes further to say that neither GFW nor FRA provides data on deforestation, but on different, albeit related variables. Regardless of how accurate these assessments may or may not be, he cautions, this omission means they are not directly suitable for monitoring progress towards recent political commitments to reduce or end deforestation.

He calls for improving and consolidating international statistics on forest change, including through: institutions reporting on forests at the international level becoming more open about discrepancies and uncertainties in their results; combining, in more collaborative ways, the engagement of national institutions and experts; the application of remote sensing technologies; accompanying commitments by states, the private sector and civil society – such as in the New York Declaration on Forests – with corresponding commitments to accurately monitor progress; and increasing investments to enable national institutions to implement forest and landscape monitoring over the long term.

CIFOR is part of the CGIAR Consortium. [Blog Post: Can We Trust Country-level Data from Global Forest Assessments?]