By Rajesh Koirala, Carbon Finance Specialist 

The Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) in partnership with Global Observation for Forest Cover and Land Dynamics (GOFC-GOLD) Land Cover Office and various other partners (UN-REDD Programme of the United Nations (FAO/UN-REDD), REDD+ Partnership, Global Forest Observations Initiative (GFOI), Australian Government, United States Silvacarbon Program, Wageningen University, and Boston University) delivered a series of regional workshops to train the selected technical experts from REDD countries working on national forest monitoring, reporting, verification and reference level development.

Four regional one week workshops were organized in three different parts of the world: one in Asia (in English), one in Latin America (in Spanish) and two in Africa (in French and English). They were held respectively in Bangkok, Thailand (April 18 - 22, 2016); in Lima, Peru (July 4 €“ 7, 2016); in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (September 19-24, 2016), and in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire (planned for February 6 €“ 10, 2017).

The basic concept of these workshop was to build upon existing expertise and experiences in a broad capacity development context, and develop €˜multipliers€™, by training the trainers. A selected group of around 40 participants from countries in each region were invited to attend the workshop with the aim of further disseminating the gained knowledge and insights and train other relevant people who are involved in REDD+ monitoring and reporting in their country. Experts from around the world presented a number of  tools and resources to attendees such as those from the GOFC-GOLD and FCPF,  from the GFOI, from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the UN-REDD Programme, from Silvacarbon and R&D partners (such as Boston University and Wageningen University).

The workshop reports as well as the materials presented at the workshop have been posted online on the corresponding FCPF page and GOFC-GOLD page.