Financing Flows and Needs to Implement the Non-Legally Binding Instrument On All Types of Forests: A study prepared for the Advisory Group on Finance of the Collaborative Partnership on Forests with the support of the Program on Forests (PROFOR) of the World Bank, October 2008
Written by Markku Simula, this background paper was prepared for the Advisory Group on Finance of the Collaborative Partnership on Forests, in advance of the meeting of the Ad Hoc Expert Group on Finance of the UN Forum on Forests (UNFF), which will be held from 10-14 November 2008, in Vienna, Austria. The paper maps the needs and available sources and mechanisms for funding, taking into account recent developments, including in the climate change regime.
According to the paper, avoiding deforestation would be among the lowest cost mitigation options to avoid increasing CO2 emissions and possibly also increasing carbon sinks. At the same time, other benefits like biodiversity conservation, poverty reduction and climate change adaptation could also be
enhanced. Through carbon revenue, prospects for the economic viability of SFM in developing
countries are expected to substantially improve as at least part of the ecosystem services that
forests provide could be remunerated.
“REDD compensation as a win-win instrument is being increasingly supported by practically all stakeholders for a variety of reasons. For tropical country governments REDD can represent an opening of a new source of financing for national priorities; for donor countries it can be a low cost option for carbon offsets; for environmental NGOs REDD can generate additional resources for biodiversity conservation; for the rural poor badly needed income and financial support to community development as well as a means to improve their forest tenure rights; for the private sector REDD can be an additional source of funding to make SFM financially viable; for political elites yet another opportunity of income; for multilateral development banks REDD can open up new ways of doing business in the context of maintenance of global public goods; and for intergovernmental organizations it offers a new area of intervention in technical assistance and a new funding source.” – Markku Simula, extract from Financing Flows and Needs to Implement the Non-Legally Binding Instrument On All Types of Forests
The report notes that meeting such a broad range of varied interests in REDD schemes will be difficult and several issues need clarification: (i) uncertainty about co-benefits, (ii) risk for violating the rights of indigenous and other local populations, (iii) possible impact on land prices, (iv) equity in distribution of REDD payments, (v) governance arrangements of REDD schemes, (vi) slowness of necessary national-level policy and legal reform processes, (vii) stakeholder participation, (viii) limited access to REDD financing by only forest-rich countries, (ix) possible exclusion of countries which have already addressed deforestation, (x) possible exclusion of drylands and other low carbon intensity forest lands, (xi) definitions and methodologies for treatment of land degradation and restoration of deforested areas, (xii) measures to address underlying causes for deforestation and forest degradation, (xiii) lack of proper understanding on the role of timber harvesting in carbon stock management, (xiv) the level of REDD application (national, sub-national or project), (xv) use of a market mechanism or a fund mechanism, (xvi) possible flooding of the carbon offset markets with REDD credits, (xvii) transaction costs, etc.
