1 February 2013, Congo Biodiversity Initiative news - The Congo Basin Forest Fund, launched by the Governments of Norway and the UK, through the African Development Bank (AfDB), is funding a regional initiative to help ten Central African countries to set up advanced national forest monitoring systems.

The initiative will focus on providing technical support to countries enabling them to use remote sensing technologies to estimate forest cover and forest cover changes, as well as to estimate the amount of carbon stocks contained in forests in the region.

The €6.1 million initiative will be managed by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the Central Africa Forests Commission (COMIFAC), and the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research (INPE), in the following countries: Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Rwanda and São Tomé and Principe.

The project will also help countries to prepare funding proposals for creating forest monitoring systems for each country, as part of the initiative for REDD+ (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries, as well as conservation, sustainable management of forests, and enhancement of carbon stocks). It will also help strengthen regional cooperation and experience sharing.