Slowly getting there: a review of country experience on estimating emissions and removals from forest degradation

Estimating emissions and removals from forest degradation is important, yet challenging, for many countries. This paper reports results from analysis of country reporting (to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and also to several climate finance initiatives) and key take-aways from a south-south exchange workshop among 17 countries with forest mitigation programmes. During the workshop discussions it became clear that, where forest degradation is a major source of emissions, governments want to include it when reporting on their mitigation efforts. However, challenges to accurately estimating emissions from degradation relate to defining forest degradation and setting the scope for estimating carbon stock changes; to detecting and monitoring degradation using earth observation data; and to estimating associated emissions and removals from field observation results. The paper concludes that recent and ongoing investments into data and analysis methods have helped improve forest degradation estimation, but further methodological work and continued effort will be needed.