Forests, Climate Change
and REDD+: a brief
introduction
Maria Brockhaus Myanmar – February 2017

Strategies for climate change
 Mitigation and adaptation: Different objectives
Mitigation:
To reduce emissions
or enhance sinks
Adaptation:
To moderate harm
or exploit beneficial
opportunities

MITIGATION
GhG concentrations
Climate change
Impacts
Responses
Global ecosystem service:
Carbon sequestration.
Instruments: CDM, REDD.
Ecosystem-Based Mitigation
ADAPTATION
Ecosystem-Based Adaptation
Local ecosystem services:
Water regulation, provision of goods...
Instruments: EBA.

Linkages between forests and
adaptation are twofold
 Adaptation for forests
• CC affect forests
• Adaptation measures needed for forests
New challenges -> understanding impacts, adapting management
 Forests for adaptation
• Forest ecosystems contribute to social adaptation
• They provide ecosystem services that contribute to risk
management, and reduce the vulnerability of local communities and
of the broader society
New challenges -> forests in adaptation of sectors outside of the forest sector
(Locatelli et al., 2010)

Forest Ecosystem-Based Mitigation:
Examples
e.g., Afforestation & Reforestation (CDM)
Increasing carbon in ecosystems
t
With reforestation
Carbon in
ecosystem
Baseline
Avoiding loss of carbon from ecosystems
Conservation
Carbon in ecosystem
t
Baseline (deforestation)
e.g., Avoided Deforestation (REDD+)

What is REDD+?
… policy approaches and positive incentives for activities
relating to reducing emissions from deforestation and
forest degradation; and the role of conservation,
sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest
carbon stocks in developing countries
UNFCCC Decision 2/CP.13–11

The core idea of REDD

REDD+ architecture

A brief REDD history
 Early 1990s: Deforestation 1/5 of GHG emissions
 2001 - COP7: Avoided deforestation too difficult to include in CDM (+ no additionality).
Only A/R
 2005 - COP11: 2 year consultation period for RED ; 2006 –Stern report
 2007 - COP13: RED(D) included in Bali Action Plan; Norway’s Climate-Forest
initiative, NOK 15 billions
 2008+: FCPF (World Bank), UNREDD, other initiatives
 2009 - COP15: some progress for REDD+, interim financing
 2010: COP 16 confirms earlier decisions on REDD+; safeguards and ref.levels; REDD+
partnership
 2011: COP 17: REDD part of commitment for all parties? Financing to be explored. Pilots
and national policy reforms
 2012: COP 18 and SBSTA - not much new, a lot of bracket text for safeguards, MRV etc.
- verification problem
 2013: COP 19 Warsaw framework, results based finance, guidance – safeguards issue
will need further guidance
 2014: SBSTA and COP 20 – Safeguards guidance, JMA
 2015: COP 21 and SBSTA concluded REDD+ negotiations ->
national implementation arenas
 2016: Green Climate Fund and REDD+ results based payments, transparency

Paris Agreement, forests and
REDD+
 First time forests are explicitly mentioned
(Art 5.1)
 Encourages action for results based
payments (e.g. REDD+) (Art 5.2)
 keeping forests and trees standing and
sustainably managed will be crucial for global
efforts to reach the 1.5 temperature goal
 especially in forest-rich countries avoided
deforestation can provide major emission
reductions contributions and REDD+ is explicitly
mentioned in many (I)NDCs

The phased approach
(adopted from Meridian Report 2009, UNFCCC)
11
Phase 1:
Readiness
Phase 2
PAM implementation
Phase 3
Results
Activities - Institutional
strengthening
- Technical
capacity building
- ..
- Governance, regulatory and
economic reforms (including
Land use planning, Law
enforcement, Moratoria)
- Forest sector reforms
- Removal of perverse subsidies
- …
- Improved forest
management
- Improved commodity
chains
- ….
Performance - Assessment
completed
- Consultations
conducted
- Capacity
increased
- …
- Policies enacted
- Measures enforced
- Proxies identified and
monitored for changes in
emissions
- …..
- Quantified emission
reductions, removal
and enhancements
(tCO2-e)
- Quantified co-benefits
- ….
Financing Immediately
available (readiness
funds)
Predictable amounts over a
defined period, including
countries’ own upfront
investments
Large-scale funding
(note-shift from market
to public funds)

Performance in REDD+
 Over past decades move towards output/outcome orientation based
on incentives, cash-on-delivery approaches
 Some problems of ‘’traditional aid’ :
- High transaction costs due to donor requirements; National ownership; “The
accountability problem”, in which countries are held accountable to the donors
instead of their citizens; low incentive to perform (‘ritual dance’ between
donor/receiver)
 REDD+ to incentivize quantifiable results: Payments for
performance
Should allow for ownership over reform, integration of context, and
for turning tables from aid receiver to service provider
 REDD+ shifted away from market-based to public fund-based,
performance element remains
 Risks of ‘aidification’ of REDD+, but lessons available (Angelsen
2016)

Key trends
Objectives: CO2 Co-benefits
Funding: Rich pay poor REDD+ countries
Policies: PES Broad PAMs Forest policies
Funding: Market Public (aid)
Scale: National Local/projects

Challenges in national REDD+
Among others ...
 Coordination across sectors and administrative levels (in
decentralized systems)
 Tenure, financing systems, benefit sharing and
participation
 MRV systems and capacity
 Scope, scale, permanence, leakage
 Sovereignty and ownership over process and reform(s)
 Capacity and political will to address the drivers of forest
carbon change (driven oftentimes by interests of powerful
elites), access/availibility to data on sectorial
contributions to DD, and identifying an effective policy
mix

www.cifor.org/gcs