16 June 2015, Mongabay news - Negotiators at U.N. climate talks in Bonn, Germany, have produced a draft  agreement on the technical provisions of a plan to reduce emissions from  deforestation and forest degradation. Known as REDD+, the forest conservation  plan is now far more likely to be included in a climate deal to be negotiated in  Paris this December, thanks to the breakthroughs made in Bonn.

 A rainforest in Borneo. Photo credit: Rhett Butler.

Washington, D.C.-based conservation non-profit Forest Trends said in  a statement  that expectations were low even though negotiators have worked hard for over a  decade to reach the REDD+ deal. But there is still substantial work left to be  done in Paris before REDD+ is ready to be put into action — mainly, figuring out  how the whole program will be financed and implemented on a large enough scale  to effectively halt deforestation and lower global emissions.

"While  REDD+ is finished on paper, the Paris global deal must provide the policy  certainty to implement REDD+ on the ground," Forest Trends' Gustavo Silva-Chávez  said in the statement. "REDD+ must be able to generate significant amounts of  finance to REDD+ countries, do so with environmental integrity, and contribute  to reducing global greenhouse gas emissions as rapidly as  possible."

REDD+ would direct billions of dollars from developed  countries to developing countries via multilateral organizations like the Forest  Carbon Partnership Facility, the Forest Investment Program, and the United  Nations Collaborative Initiative on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and  Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (aka UN-REDD).

But first the  money has to make its way through the various bureaucracies in the donor  countries, and then through another set of departments and agencies in the  recipient country, before finally finding its way to forest conservation  activities on the ground. All those steps have to be tracked and measured to  ensure the money is actually being spent to reduce emissions from deforestation  and forest degradation. Hence the need for a thorough set of guidelines and  methodologies, which is what the REDD+ draft agreement finished in Bonn  represents.

There were essentially three issues that were left to be  decided in Bonn by the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technical Advice, a  permanent subsidiary body of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change  (UNFCCC) that was created to provide information and advice on scientific and  technological matters.

One was the quality and type of information  forested recipient countries are required to report about how they're  implementing safeguards for indigenous rights and biodiversity. Brazil, which  had been the main impediment to an agreement on safeguards, apparently decided  it would rather not let the issue drag out until the December talks, according  to Reuters.

Ecosystem Marketplace, a Forest Trends website  providing news and analysis that has been following the REDD+ negotiations  closely, reports  that a compromise agreement was reached on another of the issues, payments for  non-carbon benefits of protecting forests, such as the preservation of  watersheds and biodiversity. Until now there has been no official guidance  document describing how to account for these additional benefits, so the issue  has typically been handled on an ad hoc basis.

The third issue had to do  with whether or not non-market mechanisms could be used for REDD+ payments. In  the end, the final draft text leaves the door open to both market-based  approaches as well as non-market approaches — direct transactions between an  entity looking to offset its emissions and whoever is doing the work on the  ground that is being funded. This way, countries can choose whichever approach  they prefer.

Some UN observers are critical of the REDD+ draft agreed to  in Bonn. Christoph Thies, a forest expert with the conservation group  Greenpeace, says some of the technical details are weak. "That's better than no  agreement, but nothing to celebrate, as long as financing for REDD+ is still  unclear and implementation cannot go ahead on a big scale," Thies told  mongabay.com in an email.

But with these details hammered out, not only  does REDD+ have a better shot at making it into the broader climate accord to be  hashed out in Paris later this year, but it also lets countries incorporate  REDD+ into their national climate action plans, or Intended Nationally  Determined Contributions (INDCs), as they're called in UNFCCC  parlance.

None of the big emitters that have submitted INDCs so far, like  the U.S., have used REDD+ to meet their reduction targets. But then just eleven  countries, plus the EU, have submitted their INDCs.

The fact that all  countries can head into the Paris talks with a complete draft of REDD+ in hand  is being viewed as a good sign to those who are watching the UNFCCC negotiations  with cautious optimism.

"I think this will increase the confidence of  everybody — both donors and the forest countries — that REDD can be done in a  transparent and inclusive way with environmental credibility," said Duncan  Marsh, Director of International Climate Policy at The Nature Conservancy,  according to the Ecosystem Marketplace story. "The fact that countries in these  REDD negotiations were able to get to an agreement here two days before the  conference ended is a great signal for Paris."

Source:  http://news.mongabay.com/2015/0616-gaworecki-redd-breakthrough-paris-talks.html#ixzz3dTUf0ZZz