Community-based forest monitoring using mobile devices in Kafa, Ethiopia: a study on the potential of smart phones for forest monitoring in Kafa

Ethiopia has set its goals on becoming a middle age income country in 2025 via the Climate Resilient Green Economy (CRGE) strategy. One of the four main pillars of the CRGE is to protect and re-establish forests for their economic and environmental value. This is established by applying the Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD+) framework. Next to Remote Sensed forest monitoring, field monitoring is required for the REDD+ framework. This thesis evaluates the potential for mobile based forest monitoring by local Participatory Forest Management (PFM) members in the Kafa Biosphere reserve for the REDD+ framework applied by the Ethiopian government as part of the Climate Resilient Green Economy (CRGE). The potential of mobile device for community-based forest monitoring is relatively unexplored within scientific research. On local level, mobile based monitoring raises the motivation of PFM members to conduct monitoring and it can make monitoring easier compared to conventional monitoring. On institutional level, mobile based monitoring has the potential to improve two important shortcomings of community-based monitoring (CBM). By applying a standard data collection procedure, the data credibility can be raised. Secondly, sharing of acquired data becomes easier.

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