WRI Publications Feed: The Governance of Forests Initiative

Map of SBSTA Submissions: REDD+ Safeguard Information System

Kevin Lustig — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 09:27:01 -0500

Summary

In December 2010, the 16th Conference of the Parties (COP 16) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) requested the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technical Advice (SBSTA) to develop guidance relating to paragraph 71(d) of the Cancun Agreements in time for COP 17 in Durban, December 2011.

Paragraph 71(d) speaks to a system to provide information on how the safeguards in Annex 1 of the Cancun Agreements are being addressed and respected (termed the “safeguard information system” or SIS).¹

In June 2011, SBSTA discussed the development of a guidance document on the SIS, and invited Parties and accredited Observers to submit their views on such guidance.² Submissions were welcomed on: characteristics; design; provision of information; potential barriers, if any, to providing information on addressing and respecting safeguards; and other relevant issues.

SBSTA received 26 submissions in total, 14 from Parties and 12 from Observers. Several submissions represent the view of more than one Party or Observer. While most submissions followed the structure suggested by SBSTA in June, they often covered substantively different topics under each heading. In an effort to bring greater clarity to discussions surrounding the SIS, ClientEarth and the World Resources Institute (WRI) have divided the information in the submissions into four categories:

The Role of the Safeguard Information System
The Type of Information that Parties Should Provide
How to Collect and Provide Information
Other Elements of the International Safeguard System

A summary of our key findings for each category is provided below. Tables of the specific language from Party submissions make up the rest of the document. In some cases it was difficult to be certain of the exact meaning of the language included in the submissions.³ Every effort has been made to accurately reflect, in this abbreviated format, the views contained in the submissions. ClientEarth and WRI regret any misrepresentation of those views that may have occurred in an effort to achieve brevity, clarity and comparability.

This paragraph speaks to “a system for providing information on how the safeguards referred to in appendix I to [the Cancun] decision are being addressed and respected throughout the implementation of the activities referred to in paragraph 70 above, while respecting sovereignty.” ↩
SBSTA also invited input on other elements of REDD, including reference levels and MRV. Please note that document only reviews submissions related to the safeguard information system. ↩
For example, it was sometimes difficult to know when reading the submission if Parties/observers envisaged activities (like reviews) happening at the national and/or the international level. ↩

Getting Ready: A Review of the World Bank Forest Carbon Partnership Facility Readiness Preparation Proposals

admin — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 12:04:10 -0400

The World Bank administered Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) and the UN Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (UN-REDD Programme) are two leading multilateral efforts currently supporting developing countries to become ―ready‖ to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and enhance carbon stocks (REDD+).

This working paper is the eighth in a series of regular updates reviewing the Readiness Preparation Proposals (R-PPs) submitted by REDD+ Country Participants to the FCPF and the National Programme Documents (NPDs) submitted by UN-REDD Programme countries to the UN-REDD Programme. The analysis is based on a desktop review of each R-PP and NPD in order to understand how countries are considering fundamental issues of forest governance during the readiness phase. We assess whether the documents identify major governance challenges contributing to forest loss, and whether principles of transparency, accountability, participation, and coordination are being applied in the development of REDD+ institutions, systems, and plans.

The 7th meeting of the UN REDD Programme Policy Board and the 10th meeting of the FCPF Participants Committee will be held in Berlin, Germany, from 13-14 October and 17-19 October, respectively. This paper evaluates R-PPs from Central African Republic and Colombia submitted for formal consideration by the FCPF Participants Committee. Draft R-PPs from Guatemala and Mozambique were submitted for informal review, but are not analyzed in this paper. We also review Nigeria’s NPD, which will be considered for funding by the Policy Board.

Investing in Results: Enhancing Coordination for More Effective Interim REDD+ Financing

Maggie Barron — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 14:17:55 -0500

Executive Summary

In 2007, the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) placed efforts to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries (REDD+) at the center of the international negotiations for a new global climate agreement. Three years later, the outcome of these negotiations remains uncertain, but political and stakeholder interest in REDD+ continues to be high. Developed countries have pledged approximately US$4.5 billion for REDD+ from 2010 to 2012 to support developing country capacity building, planning, and implementation. It is expected that these “interim” actions will encourage the learning, consensus building and trust necessary for an eventual international agreement.

Early experiments with interim REDD+ financing are already generating valuable lessons and experiences. However, a failure to coordinate a growing number of REDD+ donors and actors could jeopardize progress made thus far. Decisions on the allocation and use of interim financing have been ad hoc, fragmented and donor-driven. A plethora of bilateral and multilateral donors have emerged, each pursuing its own vision of REDD+ and operating in accordance with its own procedures, standards, and safeguards.

To date, REDD+ finance has focused on a relatively small subset of countries, raising the risk that large amounts of money driven by multiple donors could overwhelm the capacity of national institutions to manage resources effectively and efficiently, lead to duplicative or conflicting investments, and diminish the potential for these countries to mainstream REDD+ activities into national planning processes. If early investments in REDD+ do not deliver expected results or lead to an erosion of stakeholder confidence and trust, it will be more difficult to scale-up future financing and to maintain political momentum for an international agreement.

This working paper proposes several options for improved coordination at the national, bilateral and multilateral level. It also suggests potential roles that Parties to the UNFCCC, the Interim REDD+ Partnership, and the major multilateral REDD+ initiatives (the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility, the Forest Investment Program, and the UN-REDD Programme) can play in taking these options forward.

Overall, our analysis identifies a need to balance improvements coordination and coherence at the global level with the equal importance of promoting flexibility, experimentation and learning, and country-led approaches. More specifically, we recommend:

Improving the quality and coordination of bilateral and multilateral support for REDD+ actions so as to be more responsive to countries’ demands.
Focusing REDD+ financing on significant and sustained investments in national and subnational capacity to generate nationally driven demand for REDD+ finance, and to more effectively coordinate activities and support.
Developing better performance metrics and monitoring systems that go beyond measuring emission reductions, to enable results-based support for capacity building and policy implementation.

Tracking Transformative Forest Actions to Reduce Emissions: An Illegal Logging Case Study

Maggie Barron — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 15:09:37 -0400

Executive Summary

Climate-related forest actions

The world’s forests play a unique and complex role in the global carbon budget, as emissions from land use change—particularly deforestation— represent around 12–15% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, yet forests also act as an essential carbon sink through storage and sequestration (van der Werf et al. 2009). Efforts to maintain standing forests or enhance total forest area will therefore be a vital component of international climate mitigation efforts.

At the 2007 meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), countries adopted the Bali Action Plan as a roadmap to a new international climate agreement. The Plan included a commitment to develop and implement “policy approaches and positive incentives on issues relating to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries,” commonly known as REDD (UNFCCC 2007, p. 3). During subsequent negotiations, the scope of REDD has expanded to include activities to manage forests sustainably and to increase and conserve carbon stocks (collectively known as REDD+).

While there continues to be a number of unresolved issues in the REDD+ negotiations, including how REDD+ activities would be financed and whether or not industrialized countries would be allowed to buy the emissions reductions generated by developing countries to meet their own targets, on one key element the negotiations have remained relatively steady: the need for a “performance-based” or “results-based” approach for recognizing and supporting actions taken under the Bali Action Plan. In practice this means countries need to have the ability to measure, report, and verify that they have taken promised actions to mitigate emissions (UNFCCC 2007; AWG-LCA 2009; UNFCCC 2009). For REDD+, these discussions have focused on the ability to quantify emissions reductions, including the capacity of all countries to complete and improve national GHG inventories over time.

In addition to the discussions in the UNFCCC, there are parallel conversations in which the issue of measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) has emerged as an important topic. These have occurred in programs that provide upfront finance for countries taking readiness and emission reduction activities like the UN Collaborative Programme on REDD (UN-REDD), the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) and Forest Investment Program (FIP), and in bilateral discussions between countries.

Finally, staff in countries responsible for developing REDD+ strategies have themselves identified the need to be able to track where REDD+ strategies are being successfully implemented in order to ensure proper policy design and implementation.

While it is not yet clear how all these initiatives will overlap in terms of the MRV discussion, in all three spaces there are several reasons why countries may wish or need to track activities and outcomes other than those represented by emissions reductions to demonstrate effectiveness in meeting their commitments to various stakeholders. First, given the complexity of the actions that will need to be taken, it may be difficult to track the performance of actions taken purely by looking at emissions reductions, particularly in the short term. Second, many developing countries will need financing support—in the form of grants, loans, or sales of future emissions reductions—to develop and implement national strategies designed to reduce emissions. Depending on country circumstances and the types of activities undertaken, demonstrating results to donor countries or initiatives may require tracking results using metrics other than emissions reductions. Third, and most importantly, domestic decision makers will need a broad array of data at their disposal to assess whether they are on course to achieving their climate mitigation goals and other linked objectives.

About this paper

This paper explores the types of information and supporting data that domestic actors will need to ensure that national strategies to reduce emissions are being developed and implemented effectively. It does so by focusing on measures to address illegal logging, drawing on specific strategies and recommendations from stakeholder processes in Peru and Indonesia, to consider:

the types of actions that countries may need to undertake;
the types of information they will need to gather to track implementation of mitigation actions over time and how they might begin collecting this information; and
the differential data needs for domestic and international MRV.

Based on this bottom-up information, we then provide options for how a performance-based approach in the UNFCCC and/or for upfront climate financing programs or initiatives could be developed without creating an additional burden on developing countries.

Governance of Forests Initiative Indicator Framework (Version 1)

admin — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0400

Competing demands for food, fuel and profit are driving the loss and degradation of the world’s remaining forests. Governments, the private sector, and citizens are struggling to manage the conflicts between these priorities. The Governance of Forests Initiative (GFI) seeks to bring widely accepted principles of good governance to bear on the challenges of sustaining forests in developing countries. GFI is a collaboration of the World Resources Institute, Imazon (Brazil) and the Instituto Centro de Vida (Brazil).

The GFI indicator framework seeks to:

provide a common definition and conceptual framework for understanding the integrity of institutions and processes that govern forests across different country contexts
provide a practical tool for civil society organizations to independently, systematically and comprehensively diagnose strengths and weaknesses of forest governance in their countries, as a basis to advocate for reform
define a set of measurable, reportable and verifiable indicators of good governance of forests.

This document presents the draft “GFI Framework” and includes a complete set of qualitative indicators for conducting civil society led assessments of forest governance at the national level. We wish to emphasize that this is a DRAFT methodology and living document, which will be revised and adjusted throughout the pilot assessment process.

A Review of 25 Readiness Plan Idea Notes from the World Bank Forest Carbon Partnership Facility

admin — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0500