27 June 2012: The UN-REDD Programme has released the June edition of its newsletter, which reports on a workshop it hosted to present the preliminary findings of a country needs assessment to national REDD+ focal points from more than 20 partner countries, along with representatives from civil society, donor countries, the UNFCCC and the Programme’s Independent Advisory Group.

The workshop took place in Santa Marta, Colombia, on 26 June 2012, to address the country needs assessment, which is carried out by the UN-REDD Programme jointly with the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF).

The Newsletter further reviews three recent workshops: a two-week intensive training programme on the use of remote sensing data for forest monitoring in Tanzania and Zambia, in collaboration with Brazil’s Space Agency; an expert meeting on forest governance data collection in ten developing countries; and a global capacity development workshop on assessing and compiling forest sector activity data for greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories.

Other articles address: the joining of Uganda and Malaysia to the UN-REDD Programme; the release of four reports that identify gaps and opportunities in REDD+ capacity building in Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Viet Nam; the latest issues from the UN-REDD Programme Asia-Pacific listserv that explore how to explain REDD+ at the local level and the potential compatibility of logging and REDD+. [Publication: UN-REDD Programme Newsletter, Issue 28, June 2012]