After being in Poznan, during the 14th UN Climate Change Conference, I got even more aware of the importance of using geographical tools (and GIS in general) as a means to foster transparency.
I had the chance during two weeks to talk with different journalists from tropical countries and they told me how dificult it can be to find information about what is happening within their native forests.
I am happy to say that the Brazilian Spacy Instititute has been doing an incredible job for 20 years on providing information about deforestation in Amazon. This has been material of large interest in Brazil and the media has also played its role by monitoring and using the data for deep investigative stories.
Journalists from other countries also can bennefit from this information. And more important than that, they can call for more transparency on forestry data. This is essencial.
