The Evolving Role a REDD+ Mechanism in National Development Plans

Coalition for Rainforest Nations (CfRN) is a non-profit intergovernmental organization that promotes environmental sustainability while creating opportunities for economic advancement within tropically forested developing nations. CfRN partners stakeholders, industrialized nations, and the private sector with developing countries to drive the paradigm-shifting idea: to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, while recognizing the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks.

CfRN supports country-led REDD+ initiatives in developing countries that lead to a national accounting and monitoring system. The Coalition notes that a REDD+ mechanism must differ from sub-national models such as the United Nations’ clean development mechanism if it is to achieve the necessary capital scale to implement their national emission reduction strategies. Therefore, creating a successful REDD+ mechanism will require countries to consider overall greenhouse gas emissions in addition to those from deforestation and degradation. Deforestation can no longer be addressed in isolation, since other sectors like agriculture, industry, manufacturing, and mining are drivers of deforestation. The challenge is to alleviate the economic pressure to deforest by developing low-carbon plans for the primary deforestation drivers in a prescribed set of developing countries.

The project team produced two important reports for REDD+ to use in current and future projects. The first was a repackaging of REDD+ safeguards to prevent negative impacts from REDD+ projects. The safeguards focused on the areas of governance, community rights, and environmental impacts. The second report was a layout for climate-compatible development plans (CCDPs). These plans describe strategies that developing countries can use to become more climate-friendly. Although each country’s problems are different, these two reports can be used, and are beginning to be used, to help develop and improve projects to make developing countries more climate-compatible.