This webinar will bring together three of the collaborators on this work, Wayne Walker, Assistant Scientist, Woods Hole Research Center; Maria A Oliveira-Miranda, Senior Scientist, Provita and RAISG; and, Stephan Schwartzman, Director, Tropical Forest Policy, Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) to discuss the study. The work was led by the Amazonian Network of Georeferenced Socio-Environmental Information (RAISG).

This webinar focuses on planning and collecting data for your assessment. The discussion will be organized along 2 main challenges:

Planning for Data Collection, helps practitioners refine their plans to produce practical tools for collecting needed information, set concrete measurement aims, identify potential data sources, select data collection methods, develop specific data collection tools, and capture everything in a data collection manual.

Collecting the Data, covers the steps you need to take to actually acquire your data. These include assembling and training a data collection team, collecting data, and taking steps to assure its quality as well as taking note of some of the ethical considerations that come with data collection activities.

After the second webinar, the audience will:

Understand ways to describe exactly what it is they want to measure

Know more about the range of information gathering methods, like desk studies, focus groups, surveys, and workshops

Know where to go to find more information about design and implementation of information-gathering tools

Know some basics about organizing data collection and assuring the quality of data

This webinar will begin with the reasons for why policymakers should concern themselves with forest governance. It will describe the FAO-PROFOR 3-pillar framework on forest governance. It will discuss how the framework can be used as an assessment tool--for measurement, diagnosis and monitoring forest sector governance challenges. It will then focus on how to plan your assessment, organized into 2 main issues:

Setting Your Objectives, helps practitioners to assess why they are doing the assessment and what contextual factors could affect its design as part of an objective-setting process. This will also provide an introduction to stakeholder engagement within the assessment process.

Developing a Work Plan, helps practitioners develop their assessment’s approach by considering what they want to include within their assessment, what methods they want to use, and who will be involved in conducting the assessment. It provides guidance in considering the practical elements of developing a work plan. It also provides guidance on effectively communicating with the different stakeholder groups.

After the first webinar, the audience will:

Be able to explain to people what forest governance is, and why it is worth measuring.

Be able to sketch out a plan for doing an assessment, from framing objectives to budgeting

Understand how, when, and why to involve stakeholders in planning

Target Audience

REDD+ and FIP program implementation teams, in various countries.

The webinar will provide an overview of how default emission factors developed as part of a standardized baseline can build the foundation of an easy-to-apply MRV framework using only the information on the area over which the NAMA intervention has taken place.

Energy access is a key enhancing factor of poverty alleviation in most of the developing world. Extending grid infrastructure in rural areas is particularly difficult due to financial, commercial, regulatory as well as geographical constraints. This webinar will present the Telecom Energy Initiative of the World Bank that explore innovative business models capable of achieving rural electrification through the synergies between mobile telephony infrastructure and energy needs of rural communities. Project leaders Monali Ranade, Mohua Mukherjee and Reinhard Reichel will introduce the goals, initial findings and potential impacts of this initiative as well as explain why a wide stakeholders' coalition is required to address this crucial issue.

There is a growing base of evidence that a carbon tax, if well designed, can be a cost-effective way to reduce GHG emissions and promote low emission development. While more and more countries are pursuing such tax shifts (with other taxes being lowered), there are still many questions and criticisms, including about their political acceptability. This webinar discusses the opportunities and challenges of implementing a tax on carbon, drawing on experience in different countries. Special attention is given to British Columbia, Canada: the first jurisdiction in North America to implement a significant carbon tax shift (in 2008).

n December 2013, the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) Carbon Fund's Methodological Framework was approved by Carbon Fund Participants. It will guide the development of large-scale REDD+ programs aimed to protect tropical forests and enhance the livelihoods of local communities.

The Methodological Framework is a set of 37 criteria and related indicators (C&I), associated with five major aspects of Emission Reductions Programs: level of ambition, carbon accounting, safeguards, sustainable program design and implementation, and ER Program transactions. ER Programs included in the CF portfolio are expected to demonstrate conformity with the Framework’s criteria.

This webinar is the first in a series of sessions on a variety of aspects related to REDD+ and the FCPF. In this webinar, Marco van der Linden, who co-lead the development of the Methodological Framework, will explain to the audience the key aspects they need to know about the Methodological Framework.

The understanding of the NAMA concept is still evolving and there is as of to date relatively little on the ground experience with turning the concept into concrete actions. NAMAs are well suited as holistic programmes but their success will be strongly influenced by the level of engagement of private sector actors who could act as the source of the investment in mitigation actions under the NAMA.

This webinar, the fourth in a series organized jointly by UNDP through its MDG Carbon Programme and the the World Bank Group Climate Change team, will provide a brief overview on the topic of NAMAs and present a proposed structure for the design of NAMAs involving the creation of investment opportunities for the private sector and delivery of a range of benefits for the host country. This will be accompanied by an example of how such a NAMA investment design could work in practice.

The points to be discussed in this webinar will include matters such as national approvals, sources of funding, the definition of MRV standards and considerations that would be essential to retain private sector interest. After the presentation, participants will be invited to engage in a critical analysis of the concept with a view to strengthening its design.

The important role in the on-going climate negotiations, especially in the context of new instruments like NAMAs.

The goal of MRV systems is to develop a framework for evaluation that is consistent, systematic and transparent. While emission reductions can be easily quantified, MRV systems may require other quantitative or qualitative metrics in line with a country’s overall sustainability goals.

This webinar, the third in a series organized jointly by UNDP through its MDG Carbon Programme and the World Bank Institute Climate Change (WBICC) Practice, will provide an overview of how MRV of new instruments can build on lessons learned from existing standards. Additionally, a qualitative metrics that accounts for a country’s overall sustainability goals beyond emission reductions will also be presented in this webinar.

The lessons learned in this webinar include possible MRV approaches for new instruments, which includes data collection and the process of reporting of assessment results according to established quantification standards and additional qualitative metrics for sustainability parameters.

Synergies and trade-offs are inherent in the attempt to achieve the triple wins of food security, increased resilience and mitigation to climate change. This webinar helps to develop a better understanding of economic and social synergies and trade-offs between adaptation, mitigation and food security and provides an insight into integrated models and decision-support tools for national decision makers in order to help prioritize agricultural actions, technologies and practices.