The Federal Government, in partnership with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Global Forest Observations Initiative (GFOI), has launched the AIM4Forests project.
According to a statement by David Karls Tsokar, FAO-Nigeria, this collaboration aims to address technical and functional gaps to enhance the country’s forest monitoring capabilities, supporting sustainable forest management and paving the way for potential future access to carbon finance.
“After initial consultations and engagements, both with the FAO Country Office and the Government counterpart through the Department of Forestry of the Federal Ministry of Environment, the AIM4Forests project was officially introduced during the opening of a three-day validation workshop held from 21–23 July 2025 in Abuja,” the statement said.
Tsokar explains thag the key objectives of the workshop include strengthening Nigeria’s forest monitoring and Measurement, Reporting, and Verification (MRV) capacity; supporting sustainable forest management and the implementation of REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation); and enhancing the country’s ability to meet international climate reporting and carbon standards.
Declaring the event open, the national REDD+ coordinator Dr. Moses Ama, welcomed all participants and emphasized the importance of the project.
He said “As the UNFCCC focal point, the National Council on Climate Change, along with relevant MDAs, state forestry bodies, and partners from civil society and academia, will play an indispensable role during this process.
“I encourage all stakeholders to engage openly, contribute their expertise, and collaboratively chart a path forward that reflects our shared priorities and ambitions,” Ama noted.
The three-day workshop focused on the institutional and technical assessment of Nigeria’s National Forest Monitoring System (NFMS) and marked a significant step toward developing a comprehensive roadmap for sustainable forest management.
During the discussions, the workshop participants identified gaps in distinct areas of Nigeria’s NFMS related to institutional arrangements and reporting and verification of NFMS results, using the FAO’s NFMS assessment tool.
In addition to that, Nigeria’s MRV system has been assessed against the requirements of an international carbon standard using the ART TREES assessment tool.
The statement said that the workshop laid the foundation for the NFMS improvement roadmap, that will be developed with the Federal Department of Forestry as the basis for collaboration on forest monitoring and MRV under the AIM4Forests project. Back-to-back with the NFMS workshop, the GFOI, a lead partner of FAO, mapped the relevant NFMS stakeholders and held initial consultations with high-level ministerial representatives to gauge their interest to engage with the AIM4forests Country-Led Planning process, a process aimed at institutionalizing the NFMS as a core function of government.
The FAO Representative in Nigeria and to the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Dr. Hussein Gadain while been debriefed by the team highlighted the importance of institutional assessments in building a credible forest monitoring system.
He emphasized that, “a gap assessment of institutional arrangements and MRV capacity is designed to help identify weaknesses and opportunities to strengthen the country’s national forest monitoring system for more accurate, transparent, and effective forest data management and reporting”.
The workshop brought together a wide range of stakeholders from federal and state government institutions, civil society and academia. Participants contributed expertise in areas such as forest policy, remote sensing, field data collection, climate change reporting, and institutional financing.
Accelerating Innovative Monitoring for Forests (AIM4Forests) is a five-year programme that supports twenty forest countries in developing and implementing robust forest monitoring systems based on modern monitoring technologies and technical innovation, as well as the use of space data and remote sensing.
AIM4Forests is funded by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and implemented by FAO with GFOI as its lead partner.
