South Sudan Pilot Community Forestry Project: Forest Cover Mapping in Ifwoto and Lainya Payams - Technical Report

This report summaries the work of the UNEP-supported pilot community forestry project for two selected payams in South Sudan. The forest resource mapping exercise covered Lainya Payam of Lainya County and Ifwoto Payam of Torit County in the states of Central Equatoria and Eastern Equatoria respectively. The primary aim of the exercise was to generate an overview of land use maps with special focus on the location and extent of major natural forest areas in the two payams. The communities in these areas rely heavily on the forests and on forest products for their livelihoods so mapping was not limited to forest areas: a key aspect in the relationship between the communities and the forests - and therefore of the exercise - is utilization. The exercise adopted methodologies that have been applied elsewhere by NPA COREMAP (Community Resource Mapping) project. Those methodologies were tailored for the exercise in order to facilitate a focus on forest areas and the human interface zones of settlement and agriculture fields.