The Frog Blog UK: The blog of the Rainforest Alliance in the UK

From COP17 in Durban, South Africa, Adam Gibbon — technical manager of the Rainforest Alliance’s climate programme — reports on plans to integrate various efforts to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD).

A recent report from Forest Trends indicates that there are at least 260 active REDD+ projects in 42 countries. Each year since 2002, the number of REDD+ projects has grown at a consistent rate. The projects range in scale from hundreds of hectares to hundreds of thousands of hectares. While they can have significant impacts at a regional level, ambitions for the negotiations underway in Durban aim higher. The goal is to make REDD+ operational at a national scale, and include it in the global agreement on mechanisms to reduce deforestation and degradation.

With deforestation and forest degradation accounting for 11 to 17 percent of global emissions, it’s clear that REDD+ must be part of any strategy to avoid dangerous climate change. Under fast-start funding from developed countries, preparation work is already underway for the development and management of REDD+ projects and programmes in developing countries. The preparation involves (among other things): assessing national capacities; evaluating the drivers of deforestation; determining past rates of deforestation (and projecting future rates to generate a reference level); conducting stakeholder engagement; designing strategies to reduce deforestation and degradation; and designing forest monitoring systems. As part of this approach, countries may begin working at a more manageable ‘subnational’ level, in particular states or provinces. Read the rest of this entry »