IT-based Forest Inventory Tool Strengthens Forest Planning in India

USAID’s Forest-PLUS 2.0 program supports India’s Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) to strengthen forest management through development of decision-support tools for forest landscapes. A key objective of the Forest-PLUS 2.0 contract was to refine several information tools developed under the initial Forest-PLUS program to support data collection and development of Working Plans to set forest management objectives with State Forest Departments (SFD) in the program’s three target landscapes. Using a Collaborating, Learning, and Adapting (CLA) approach, Forest-PLUS 2.0 engaged MoEFCC and the SFDs to reassess their needs for applications that support forest management, carried out a collaborative inception phase review of program activities, and worked closely with USAID to identify contract modifications required to support the new direction. With support from USAID and the Government of India, Forest-PLUS 2.0 applied adaptive management to reshape its technology tools, which are now being used to support forest inventory and analysis in 118 divisions across six states of India covering nearly 4 million hectares.