National Forest Monitoring System (NFMS)
In so far as the design of a National Forest Monitoring System (NFMS) for REDD+, PNG has managed to finalise the NFMS and submitted 1st FRL to the UNFCCC for technical assessment in January 2017 (http://redd.unfccc.int/submissions.html?country=png). PNG’s REDD+ efforts and readiness in the area of NFMS and FRL have been led by PNGFA, with close support and collaboration from CCDA and technical assistance from FAO and JICA. Alongside the technical support and development work, numerous stakeholder events on NFMS and FRL have been held to bring together all relevant parties. Information drawn from these meetings has informed the development of an NFMS Roadmap for PNG which has been implemented.
The capacity on forest monitoring of PNG using remote sensing technology has significantly improved in recent years with enormous advances made through the technical support from FAO under the UN-REDD Programme, EU funded NFI project and close collaboration with JICA project. One of the most significant achievements being the development of a Climate Change and Forest Monitoring Web-Portal through which numerous land use layers can be visualised. The GoPNG through PNGFA also completed national land use change assessments using the FAO developed Open Foris Collect Earth in 2015 and 2019.
PNG has made great progress on the REDD+ readiness and is now moving to its implementation and the results based payment. As a base for implementation and monitoring, PNG had prepared GHG-Inventory and Biennial Update Report (BUR) with Technical Annex on REDD+ in 2018 and submitted the compiled summary reports to UNFCCC in April 2019. Technical Assessment by UNFCCC had been conducted for PNG BUR and Technical Annex on REDD+ from August to the end of 2019 then a technical assessment report had been released by UNFCCC in early 2020.
Under the Cancun Agreement, NFMS should have two functions; “Monitoring” function to monitor REDD+ activities and “MRV” function to measure and report the performance of REDD+ activities to UNFCCC; which then undergoes verification. PNG established a robust domestic MRV system, which contains in-country verification using two different methods (point sampling and wall-to-wall mapping) with tools (Collect Earth and TerraPNG) hosted by different government organizations; PNG Forest Authority (PNGFA) and Climate Change and Development Authority (CCDA).
As part of the monitoring function, PNG established and officially released PNG Climate Change and Forest Monitoring Web-Portal (http://png-nfms.org/portal/) in 2017 by Prime Minister to disseminate forest and land use information related to REDD+ to the public ensuring transparency of PNG REDD+ progress. This portal is recognized as an achievement by various government and private organizations in PNG to share the REDD+ related information in one single platform for the first time in PNG. Anybody and organizations can utilize this portal to promote the achievements related to REDD+ in PNG.
Papua New Guinea’s NFMS for REDD+ under UNFCCC