Community MRV
The GCP is working to create a community-based monitoring scheme to help local communities living in and around tropical forests in Guyana to more actively engage in future REDD+ schemes. They will monitor the health of their forests as well as how effectively REDD is being implemented on the ground. The information gathered by local communities can also feed into national monitoring, providing detailed information to complement and enhance official government data. This project is being developed in partnership with other organisations including the Iwokrama International Centre in Guyana, and is funded by the Norwegian government’s development agency (www.norad.no).
Tropical forests act as giant utilities providing vital ecosystem services to the world. Although we all benefit from these services, it is indigenous peoples, local communities and developing countries that bear the cost of their maintenance.
As part of a future UN climate treaty, REDD+ could pay forest-owning nations who protect their forests. In return, these nations will have to measure, report and verify (MRV) the effectiveness of their actions, both in terms of the carbon retained in their forests and the involvement of indigenous peoples and local communities in the process. In addition, on-the-ground implementation of REDD+ will require robust but cost-effective monitoring to ensure that funds are being well spent.
Communities should have a central role in developing and implementing these MRV and Monitoring systems. This project is working with communities in the North Rupununi region of Guyana to create a Community Monitoring scheme for REDD+ that will be complementary to and feed into the national-level MRV system that the Government of Guyana develops as part of its Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS). The Community-based monitoring scheme will, we hope, provide a model for communities to replicate in other parts of Guyana, Amazonia and tropical forest regions more widely.
The project will involve the participatory design of a monitoring scheme that can be implemented by trained technicians working in their own communities. We envisage that the local data collected by communities will be uploaded to a secure internet platform. Data on forest and savannah ecosystem services such as carbon can then be used in conjunction with satellite forest measurements to build up a more complete picture of the health and uses of the ecosystem. We also intend the system to include measurements of locally-important resources such as medicinal plants, sacred sites, freshwater and biodiversity, with appropriate restrictions on data access by the wider internet community so that sensitive information is kept secure.
