GLOBAL

Taking on new projects in different countries or monitoring different resources usually requires a staged approach enabling the recruitment of tailored expertise, consultations and test work with government officials, civil society, the international donor community and where appropriate, the private sector.

The bulk of REM's work has been in African countries  given the organic growth of our pioneering work of mandated Independent Forest Monitoring there and:

• Successful collaborations in one country leading to government invitations to work in neighbouring ones
• Regional capacity building with national monitors leading to increased collaborations

We have expanded our projects to other countries and resources and developped global tools since.

REM's way of working is different to many non-governmental organisations in that we need proactive staff who have legal expertise, qualifications linked to the resources that we are monitoring, who are proactive and willing to make a difference but who can also work in an objective manner, considering constraints on government and industry side and working with them to resolve them rather than stopping at exposing problems.

We ensure that the majority of our staff are nationals to the countries we monitor and include extensive training activities in our work, which we trust has been reflected in the quality of information collected and reports produced in the 8 countries we have worked in to date.