Forest Data Partnership

Uniting organizations, governments and private sector partners around trusted, transparent geospatial data solutions that enable credible monitoring, verification and disclosure of progress in ending deforestation and accelerating restoration.

Launch platform

Topic

Forests

The Forest Data Partnership is part of Forests. Contact Stephanie Tan for more details or media inquiries.

The world is facing unprecedented levels of agriculture-driven deforestation, despite governments and companies having pledged significant action. Agricultural expansion continues to drive 90% of global deforestation. In 2021 alone, the world lost 3.75 million hectares of tropical primary rainforests – equivalent to a rate of 10 football pitches a minute.

Advancements in technology offer unprecedented opportunities to transform the way landscapes are monitored and managed. However, today’s ecosystem of data and information is highly fragmented, accompanied by inconsistent interpretation of what is happening on the ground.

To harness the full potential of data, we urgently need a collective approach to land use data.

The Forest Data Partnership is developing a consistent geospatial data ecosystem that will enable companies, governments, NGOs, researchers and civil society to access open-source, validated data related to forest-risk commodities and restoration. This strengthens global monitoring of commodity-driven forest loss and advances restoration across the globe, enabling the credible monitoring, verification and disclosure of progress in reducing deforestation and restoring degraded lands.

We are convening public and private sector stakeholders to collectively address the challenge of improving land use data and help shape the future of forest monitoring and restoration solutions.

Creating a universally aligned approach can be achieved through a framework of five action-oriented workstreams that:

Engage stakeholders to participate in the Partnership and communicate needs and lessons learned to create more effective interventions
Align stakeholders to reach consensus around key datasets in the ever-expanding landscape of forest monitoring data and identify critical data gaps
Innovate to build functional consensus around existing data and develop new approaches and novel data where necessary
Deploy consistent, open-source and validated geospatial data on commodities most linked to deforestation and forest degradation to enable stakeholders to credibly and systematically monitor, verify and disclose progress
Assess how increased alignment and accessibility can help stakeholders collectively reduce deforestation and improve restoration