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Establishment of a National Forest Monitoring System and Forest Reference Level - TCP/SAM/3804

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Year of publication 2024

Place of publication Rome, Italy ;

Pages 8

Publisher FAO ;

Category Factsheet

Synopsis (short abstract) Samoa has a native forest estate covering around 58 percent of the total land area. The country’s native forests are extremely valuable for water catchment, soil protection, biodiversity conservation, traditional medicines and carbon sequestration. Their protection and restoration is vital, as recognized in Samoa’s National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan. The government has conducted several initiatives to restore the native forest estate, including the One Million (2009 2012) and Two Million (2015 2020) Tree Planting Campaigns, organized by MNRE, which reforested 1 019 ha of degraded forest and watershed areas. The Three Million Tree Planting Campaign (2022 2028) was officially launched in May 2022. Samoa already had a National Forests Inventory and a forestry database, Samoa Forests Resources Information System. However, the inventory data were out of date and the Forestry Division of MNRE requested FAO assistance to address this critical information gap. The project would utilize new information to establish a National Forest Monitoring System (NFMS) and Forest Reference Level (FRL), and build the capacity of MNRE forestry staff in forest monitoring and remote sensing technologies. This would enable Samoa to obtain access to finance from REDD+, a climate change mitigation solution developed by Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), as well as other funding windows, such as the Green Climate Fund (GCF) in support of the sustainable development of local communities and the protection of the country’s precious native forest environments.

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