The ongoing collaboration on "National Forest Monitoring Systems Based on Remote Sensing and Geographic Information System" is one of the most successful examples of South-South collaboration between UN-REDD Programme partner countries to date. Through this initiative, the UN-REDD Programme, FAO and the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research (INPE)jointly support the set-up of national satellite monitoring systems in interested UN-REDD Programme partner countries. Pilot training courses and in-country implementation assistance are key elements in this example of South-South cooperation, which was featured recently on the website of UNEP's South-South Cooperation Exchange Mechanism.

Countries such as Ecuador, Guyana, Mexico, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Vietnam, Papua New Guinea (PNG), Tanzania and Zambia have participated in these pilot training courses focused on the applicability of the Brazilian satellite forest monitoring system, called TerraAmazon, in UN-REDD Programme partner countries. Following these capacity building sessions, the FAO and the UN-REDD Programme have been working to ensure that national satellite forest monitoring systems are adapted to national circumstances and conditions.

The UN-REDD Programme, FAO and INPE also worked with the DRC and PNG to launch their national forest monitoring systems in December 2011 at COP17 in Durban. These monitoring portals allow users to follow and have open access to available forest data, updated frequently to present national forest conditions within each country. The use of remote sensing data allows a high frequency of data availability as well as the possibility for wall-to-wall monitoring of the forests in both countries. During the first three months of 2012, FAO and the UN-REDD Programme have continued working on the set-up and support of the national satellite monitoring systems of Viet Nam, Paraguay, and Zambia.

This example of ongoing South-South collaboration demonstrates that both the transfer of technical skills as well as the introduction of the national forest monitoring systems for REDD+ are major priorities for partner countries. The ultimate goal of all these joint efforts is to build up the autonomous capacity of REDD+ countries to monitor their forest-related land cover, generating annual data on deforestation, forest degradation and forest conversions.