ABSTRACT
The case for people's right to participation in environmental issues and public access to environmental information as a human right was accepted in the Aarhus Convention of the UNECE in 1998 (https://www.unece.org/env/pp/documents/cep43e.pdf). Recent UNFCCC documentation on methodology for REDD+ 1 has explicitly referred to the role of local communities in monitoring and measuring changes in forest carbon stocks. Much less thought has been given in the policy documents and the literature, however, to how communities might do this, and what the benefits and development spin-offs might be. This chapter first explains the rationale for, and benefits of, local participation in mapping, measuring and monitoring forest carbon services, and then how participatory geographical information systems (PGIS) can be used for this. It outlines the probable data requirements at local level for participation in REDD+, and explains the nature of a forest inventory methodology built around local knowledge and specially adapted to local needs.
