The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation will scale up its geospatial monitoring toolkit thanks to a new cooperation accord with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, FAO said in a statement on Thursday.
A three-year agreement signed on Thursday will expand the capacity of FAO's accessible platforms for forestry and land-use assessments, the statement said.
The agreement will give FAO member states and other users greater access to JAXA data sets and more "ground-truthing" evidence through FAO's forest monitoring platforms, according to the statement.
"As deforestation and land-use changes are one of the leading sources of global carbon emissions, coordinated satellite-based information has a critical role to play in supporting countries to achieve their pledges in the Paris Agreement on climate change," said Daniel Gustafson, FAO's Deputy Director-General for Programmes, who signed the agreement in Tsukuba today.
The new agreement will expand the scope and usability of FAO platforms such as SEPAL and the Global Forest Resources Assessment Remote Sensing Survey, while also boosting the granular accuracy of JAXA-led initiatives that cover the world's mangroves as well as forestry and land-use themes in general, said the statement.
"This is the kind of partnership that smartly leverages skills and resources to boost our knowledge base and potential impact," said Hiroto Mitsugi, FAO Assistant-Director-General of the Forestry Department.
