Building REDD Capacity in Developing Countries

Encouraging Effective Actions in Developing Countries to Address Deforestation and Forest Degradation

There is broad recognition that reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation in developing countries (REDD) will be an important element of the emerging international climate change regime. Global deforestation is estimated to be the source of 20 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions per year. At the same time, however, some argue that forestry has the highest potential of any sector to provide low-cost greenhouse gas reduction solutions between now and 2030.

Momentum has built quickly to strengthen the inclusion of REDD—a way to address environmental degradation and encourage enhancement of forest carbon stocks by assigning an economic value to intact forests and peat swamps—in the international climate regime. Developing and developed countries see REDD as a positive way to contribute to global mitigation efforts. However, REDD is also a highly technical and rapidly evolving subject and many developing countries require support to develop options and negotiate effective modalities and processes that could be included within an agreement under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

To provide developing countries with this support, IISD has partnered with the Alternatives to Slash and Burn Partnership for the Tropical Forest Margins, World Agroforesty Centre (ASB-ICRAF), to deliver a series of workshops that aim to increase understanding of the REDD negotiations. They also aim to provide information on actual experiences in the forestry sector that could be used to lay the technical and policy foundations for better REDD programs. In addition to bringing together negotiators and stakeholders from countries receiving support from UN-REDD and the World Bank Forest Carbon Partnership Facility, the workshops encourage South-South sharing of information.

The first set of workshops, REDD at the Copenhagen Climate Talks and Beyond—Bridging the Gap between Negotiations and Action, were held in:

The policy brief, Key messages for Copenhagen (PDF - 244 KB), was the main outcome of the workshops. The key messages were presented at an IISD-hosted side event at Development and Climate Days in December 2009. A report on the side event is available (PDF - 172 KB). IISD and ASB-ICRAF presented a poster (PDF - 6 MB) on the workshops at Forests Days in December 2009.

A second series of workshops—one in Asia and one in Africa—will be held in early 2010. These events will help developing countries define the processes and modalities of the REDD mechanism agreed to in Copenhagen.

Generous support for this project has been provided by the Norwegian Government.

For more information about this project, please email Stefan Jungcurt.