Today in Yucatán, Mexico, CTrees announced a new partnership with the Governors'​ Climate & Forests Task Force, a coalition of 43 member states and provinces covering more than one-third of the world's tropical forests and committed to forest protection, emissions reduction, and rural economic development. The partnership will promote forest carbon accounting, land-use monitoring, and governance tools for jurisdictions using CTrees’ state-of-the-art satellite data products and science-based techniques.

Launched at the task force's annual meeting in Merida, the partnership will include exchange of data to improve jurisdictional strategies to measure forest carbon, reduce emissions, and access climate finance. This joint effort will also include an in-depth training session for remote sensing technicians from GCF Task Force member hosted at UCLA this summer.

“Despite universal recognition of the importance of jurisdictions for protecting tropical forests, lack of accurate data on carbon emissions and removals is hindering policy innovation and large-scale investments. Our goal with this partnership is to learn from member states’ experiences and bring CTrees’ cutting-edge science to improve their jurisdictional strategies," said CTrees CEO Dr. Sassan Saatchi.

"The GCF Task Force member states’ focus on technology alongside governance, community rights, and finance, make them an ideal partner for us to develop innovative data tools that support measurable reductions in emissions,” he said.

Throughout the week, CTrees staff scientists Dr. Saatchi, Dr. Stephanie George, and Dr. Ricardo Dal Agnol da Silva, and head of marketing Daniel Melling, met with delegates from Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Peru, and other countries to learn about their data needs for monitoring forest carbon and to share more about CTrees' innovative data products.