The meeting was held at the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Agriculture of Georgia with members of the Corine Land Cover (CLC) Team of Georgia to discuss the implementation and next steps on land use/land cover mapping. Georgia is the first country to have successfully produced three CLC layers over a pilot area capital city and its surroundings (CLC2018 status, CLC2001 status, and CLC-Changes between 2001 and 2018). Presently, the important tasks are the visibility, accessibility and exchange of experiences between partners, countries, and with European Environment Information and Observation Network (Eionet) members, on the development of CLC products and their applications. Georgia has now completed the land cover inventory.

The three CLC layers from the pilot area will be uploaded in the National Global Forest Watch portal managed by the Environmental Information and Education Centre in Georgia. Georgia is also participating in the Global Forest Watch initiative to produce a forest and land use atlas (supported by the World Resources Institute/Global Environment Fund (GEF)/UNEP/ Environment Rating Scales Institute), where the forest layers are available.

The next steps for future work is to produce a technical report related to the CLC pilot activity, ensuring public accessibility of the results through a national data portal and to develop a proper proposal for applying CLC to the entire Georgian territory. Land cover change is an important indicator under the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), and Georgia is obliged to report the land cover changes to the UNCCD Secretariat (for the last reporting, the UNCCD Secretariat reported on behalf of Georgia using global data).