On November 15, 2023, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) organized an interactive webinar to launch FAO's Forest Monitoring for Climate Action series of courses, emphasizing the pivotal role of innovative learning methods, and reliable and transparent forest data in combatting deforestation and contributing to climate action.

The webinar featured an impressive lineup of speakers, including Zhimin Wu, Director of the Forestry Division at FAO, Cristina Petracchi from the FAO eLearning Academy, and Rocio Condor and Julian Fox from the FAO's National Forest Monitoring (NFM) team.

The event also provided insights and future learning opportunities provided under the new AIM4Forests programme, shared by Ms Fiona Stringer from the International Forests Unit of the UK. As well as Alejandra Guevara from FAO Ecuador and Jacob Amoako from the Ghana Forestry Commission, who shared their experiences with the courses and the usefulness to their work.

Of the almost 500 attendees at the webinar, the majority were government representatives (26%), NGOs and civil society (17%), and Universities or Research Centers (16%). 42% of the attendees were women and 22% belonged to an indigenous group. 43% of attendees were between 36-50 years old, the majority coming from Africa (44%), followed by Europe (20%) and Asia (15%) regions. 

More information here: https://www.fao.org/national-forest-monitoring/news/detail/en/c/1663255/