Africa-Press – Liberia. The Transformative Pilot on Forest and Mangroves Monitoring supported by the Environment and Climate Change Canada through NovaSphere has concluded its handoff Training in Monrovia. The Training was conducted by J. Negatus Wright, an independent consultant with support from the Spatial Informatics Group (SIG). The Transformative Pilot has been successful in hiring the services of the Spatial Informatics Group (SIG), and has been providing capacity supports to the geospatial and GIS staff of the Forestry Development Authority (FDA), The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Ministry of Mines and Energy (MME), the Liberia Land Authority (LLA) and the Liberia Institute of Statistics and Geo-Information Services (LISGIS). These capacity supports include the use of spatial technologies like Collect Earth Online and Google Earth Engine scripts to monitor the forest and environment of Liberia, as well as the provision of technologies, such as high tech drones, computers and GPS to the national and regional staff of the EPA and FDA. Over the last two years, the support provided to the Transformative Pilot on Forest and Mangroves monitoring by the Canadian government through NovaSphere has trickled down to the regional counties of Liberia, providing capacity and equipment support to over 200 staff of the mentioned government’s ministries and agencies.
In continuation of its capacity support to Liberia, SIG has developed a forest alert tool to monitor deforestation in Protected and Proposed Protected forest areas in Liberia, and GEE scripts combined with Collect Earth Online (CEO) to prepare forest cover maps of Liberia. The training was held at the University of Liberia’s main Campus at the Climate Action Lab from December 8-18, 2025 and brought together over 20 participants.
The training aimed at ensuring that the operations and capacities built during the life of the pilot project become embedded and utilized, actively influencing decision making and investments. In addition to the CEO-and GEE advanced training there were sector specific, such as breakouts sessions involving the various institutions represented. The EPA and FDA’s technical teams that were trained have begun using the skills and knowledge gained to map Land Use and Land Use Change Data which will be used to set up Liberia’s Forest Reference Emission LEVEL. The participants expressed appreciation to NovaSphere and the Canadian government for their support in making sure that they received the technical capacity and technology needed to monitor the Liberian forest.
As it can be recalled, Canada supports countries in the Pacific Alliance and Western Africa to define regional priorities to address greenhouse gas (GHG), and Short-lived climate pollutant and emissions to pursue opportunities to strengthen their capacity to measure, report and verify (MRV) emissions. These initiatives facilitate South-South MRV collaboration and knowledge sharing within and between the Pacific Alliance and West Africa as a means of exchanging best practices and supporting the replication of best practices generated from Canada’s climate finance sectorial project in each region. Through capacity-building and regional collaboration efforts, the MRV for Climate Action initiative support countries to achieve their respective Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC).
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