Governance of Forests Initiative

The Governance of Forests Initiative (GFI) is a collaboration between WRI, the Instituto do Homem e Meio Ambiente da Amazonia (IMAZON), and the Instituto Centro de Vida (ICV) to develop a framework of indicators for assessing and improving governance in the forest sector, as an essential precursor to debating whether and how to unleash market forces to incentivize emissions reductions.

The framework will provide a common definition for “good governance” based on universally accepted principles of transparency, participation, accountability, coordination and capacity. A first round of assessments will focus on Brazil and Indonesia, which are key nations in the context of preserving the world’s remaining tropical forests and raise very different governance challenges.

Background

The planet is currently losing 7.3 million hectares of forest per year, primarily in the tropics. This rampant deforestation has serious implications for the poor, the world’s biodiversity, and climate change. Deforestation releases 5.9 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year, representing nearly one-fifth of current global greenhouse gas emissions.

In December 2007, the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) agreed to consider positive incentives for “Reducing Emissions from Deforestation in Developing countries” (REDD).

The next stage of the international climate regime has the potential to create an effective REDD financial mechanism to curb forest loss, and presents an important opportunity to refocus global attention on the challenges of sustainable forestry management and the drivers of deforestation. For example, the failure of governments to enforce forest laws and consider the concerns of forest-dependent poor contributes to forest loss in the developing world. In order for the REDD mechanism to achieve significant and lasting emission reductions, it is essential to strengthen forest governance.

To date, international discussions on REDD have focused on technical requirements for quantifying emissions reductions, monitoring forest cover change, and alternative sources of finance – from official development assistance to carbon markets. However, deforestation is as much an issue of poor forest governance—the processes, policies, and laws by which forest management decisions are made—as it is an issue of misaligned economic incentives. If the REDD mechanism is driven primarily by investors in search of low cost carbon offsets and host governments in search of hard currency, there is a significant risk that the environmental quality of the projects will be compromised, and the rights and concerns of the forest dependent poor will be neglected in the exchange.

Ideally, REDD mechanisms should reward countries that empower forest dependent communities to participate in forest management, uphold the rights of forest dependent people, and create more capable, effective and accountable institutions to oversee forests.