Ministry of Environment and Forest. National REDD+ Secretariat. Minutes of 2 nd PIT Meeting

Transcription

1 Ministry of Environment and Forest National REDD+ Secretariat Minutes of 2 nd PIT Meeting Implementation of a NFM and MRV System for REDD+ Readiness in Ethiopia Date: 12 June 2015 Time: 09:00 12:00 Venue: Ministry of Environment and Forest (9 th floor meeting room) Facilitator: Dr. Julian Gonzalo The Project Implementation Team for the FAO TA Implementation of a NFM and MRV System for REDD+ Readiness in Ethiopia held its second Meeting on Friday, June 12th from 9:00 to 12:00 in the morning, at MEF (9th Floor Meeting Hall). Agenda Time Issue By 09:00 09:05 Welcome Dr. Yitebitu MEF 09:05 09:30 Summary and report on Remi and Yelena FAO/all Mission: LULC accuracy assessment. Results of the exercise and next coming activities (office and field). LULC changes assessment document and next mission (July). 09:30 09:50 Summary and report on Antonello Mission: FAO/all NFI QA/QC 09:50 10:00 Progress of data entry. Data availability FAO/all 10:00 10:20 Inclusion of botanist in NFI crews and QA/QC FAO/all team. 10:20 10:30 NFI Safeguards Information. Dr. Julian Gonzalo MEF / All 10:30 10:40 Finalizing the ToRs of national consultants for FAO/all Activities 1.2b and 1.3; Activities 3.2,3,3 and 3.4 and plant species database 10:40 11:00 M&MRV project. Activities undertaken by the Government and Programation. Dr. Julian Gonzalo MEF / All

2 SHORT SUMMARY OF THE ISSUES RAISED, DISCUSSED AND DECISIONS MADE UNDER AGENDA 1. Some general remarks Dr. Yitebitu Moges noted the need for: Achieve sufficient quorum to hold the PIT meetings; at least a half plus one of the PIT members. FAO has to inform World Bank (Ato. Shimeles Sima Erketa, serketa@worldbank.org) about the planned FAO Missions. It was decided at the meeting hold on April, 29 th, 2015 between MEF, FAO and WB that FAO HQ missions have to meet and discuss with the World Bank in Addis Ababa. FAO didn t report WB about last two FAO HQ missions. FAO HQ missions have to be better planned, reporting to MEF about unforeseen changes early enough to be able to react in time; referring to the changes in agenda of the last two missions not informed to REDD+ Secretariat. With agreement on this regard, FAO will rectify and address these issues. 2. Summary and report on FAO HQ last mission: LULC accuracy assessment/ LULC changes assessment design. Ato Yibeltal explained that the technical workshop and training on LULC accuracy assessment were attended by 20 and 10 experts from different MRV institutions respectively. He then explained the main achieved agreements on FAO/MEF LULC2013 Accuracy Assessment procedure and the state of the art. The accuracy assessment was designed considering a random sampling approach with an a priori accuracy level of 90% over 16 classes, with minimum 50 sampling units by class. In total 2500 sampling units were overlapped on the LULC During the FAO training 1126 sampling units were identified using Collect Earth, 964 with high accuracy level. Although preliminary results seem to be very low, we await the final report by Yelena Finegold in the coming days. Dr. Julian Gonzalo noted the urgency of completing the exercise (including field check phase if necessary) before starting the next FAO HQ mission. Regarding the new FAO HQ mission for the LULC changes assessment, Dr. Julian Gonzalo noted that a justification of the 250 sampling points considered in the ToR document has to be provided and the need of extending the mission to complete with the same group the AD analysis in July. It was agreed that the accuracy assessment exercise will be completed, most probably starting on next Wednesday, June 17 th at FAO ET office (because a better internet connection) and during 5 days by the same team (or a reduced one to be decided on Monday, June, 15 th ) that participated in the LULC accuracy assessment training to be assigned by MEF. Most probably on June, 25 th Melakeneh Gelet will be able to

3 provide Dr. Julian Gonzalo the updated and complete confusion matrix with the calculated statistics to decide and plan new actions. Ato Yibeltal will communicate FAO HQ (Remi D Annunzio) the comments on the ToR of the next mission and about the need to extend the mission for completing change detection. Dr. Julian will communicate with Remi on technical matters, if needed. 3. Summary and report on FAO HQ last mission: Summary and report on NFI QA/QC. Mr. Antonello Salis reported to the PIT about his mission and the main conclusions and recommendations included in his NFI QA/QC report. A 10% of the NFI Sampling Units will be revisited in field for quality control tasks. These QC sampling units will be selected by using a dynamic score approach based on variables related with higher potential errors. The report will include recommendations about the thresholds for acceptable errors in various variables of interest. He committed to finish and send the NFI QA/QC report with his ppt presentation in the coming week (by June 19 th ). The QA/QC team can start their tasks with the first 5 NFI selected SUs (from the 54 SUs that have been entered so far). 4. Progress of NFI data entry process: Data availability Ato Yibeltal and Ato Abebe reported the PIT that the number of NFI SUs entered by day and person is 1.25 (54 NFI SUs have been entered to date). With these numbers it would take 2 months and a half to finish the data entry process for Oromia SUs. Melakeneh Gelet explained for the quorum about the importance of networking the data entry process with the existing server. Because MEF (REDD+ Secretariat) needs these Oromia data to the end of July (to process it during August), and also accelerate data entry as a whole, the PIT decided to propose the temporary appointment of two additional data encoders. It will be decided during next week the possibility of preparing these contracts through FAO or using staff from MEF. Abebe with Julian will take the issue to the State Minister. Dr. Julian Gonzalo will handle the purchase of router and configuration of the network together with REDD+ IT expert as soon as possible. 5. Inclusion of botanist in NFI crews and QA/QC team Ato Yibeltal and Ato Abebe presented a proposal to include a taxonomist or botanist in the NFI crews and QA/QC team (referring the recommendation of Mr. Antonello) to improve the species identification in field. Considering the proposal to hire a specialist to complete a vegetation database, a guide for species identification and to train the field crews, the PIT decided that it was not necessary at this point. 6. NFI Safeguards Information Regarding the safeguards information that currently is being collected in the NFI, Ato Abebe and Dr. Julian Gonzalo shared the corresponding forms with the Safeguards Specialist from REDD+ Secretariat for feedback. The objective is to complete this information through the current forms or additional ones. Dr. Julian Gonzalo shared this information with the PIT.

4 The Safeguards Specialist from REDD+ Secretariat will prepare asap, in collaboration with Dr. Julian Gonzalo, a new form to collect the safeguards information in the NFI. This proposal will be sent to FAO HQ for comments and discussed in a next PIT extraordinary meeting. 7. Finalizing the ToR of a national consultant for Activities 1.2b and 1.3 These ToR were sent by and received comments from Dr. Julian Gonzalo. Ato Yibeltal explained the concern of Rebecca Tavani (FAO HQ) because she considered that it was not a good approach to mix both tasks; the institutional arrangement analysis on MRV (1.2b) and the IT analysis on MRV (1.3), under the same profile and background. The PIT, advised by Dr. Julian Gonzalo, agreed for going ahead with the contract as per the ToR but with an arrangement in such a way that this NC with the background specified in the ToR will have the support and collaboration of Dr. Julian Gonzalo to deal with the first assignment and the IT specialist from REDD+ Secretariat (MEF) to deal with the second one. 8. Finalizing the ToR of a national consultant for Activities 3.2, 3.3, and 3.4 These ToR were sent by and received the comments from Dr. Julian Gonzalo The ToR were approved including the comments/modifications and FAO will go ahead with recruitment of a NC asap. 9. Finalizing the ToR of a national consultant for the elaboration of a plant species database, train NFI field crews and other related activities. These ToR were sent by and received the comments and a lot of amendments from Dr. Julian Gonzalo. Ato Yibeltal asked Dr. Julian Gonzalo about the task regarding the GIS project and Dr. Julian Gonzalo clarified that it was just a minor task needed as the right presentation of a geo database. The ToR were approved including the comments/modifications and FAO will go ahead with recruitment of a NC asap. 10. Progress on M&MRV project. Activities undertaken by the Government and program. Dr. Julian Gonzalo presented some slides regarding the timeframe for the elaboration and the main characteristics of the various versions of the FREL/FRL for Oromia and Ethiopia. It was agreed to develop the tasks necessary to achieve those objectives on time. Finally with a global tone of agreement and collaborative work this meeting was ended at 12:00.

5 ANNEX: LIST OF REGISTERED PARTICIPANTS IN THE MEETING Nº Area of expertise Activity/ Position assigned Name Role Phone nº 1 REDD+ Secretariat National Project Coordinator Dr. Yitebitu Moges Chair yitebitumoges@yahoo.com M&MRV Forest Monitoring MRV Specialist (from REDD+ Secretariat) Dr. Julian Gonzalo Co Secretary jgonzalo.jg@gmail.com NFI NFI project focal person (MEF) Abebe Seifu Member abebeseifu@ymail.com Project Management FAO project operations and admin Yibeltal Tiruneh Member Yibeltal.Tiruneh@fao.org Remotesensing and GIS expert National Consultant (FAO) Melakeneh Gelet Member Melakeneh.Gelet@fao.org