Operationalising National Safeguards for Results-Based Payments from REDD+

After formulating National REDD+ Strategies and Action Plans, Vietnam, Ghana and Peru are ready to proceed towards REDD+ implementation. To mitigate the potential negative impacts of REDD+ projects and ensure that REDD+ will be implemented in a transparent and inclusive manner, with respect for the rights of local communities and indigenous people and with consideration for the protection of biodiversity, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) stipulated social and environmental guidelines, called safeguards. To monitor and ensure the transparency, consistency and effectiveness of the implementation of safeguards, the UNFCCC requires all REDD+ countries to establish a Safeguards Information System (SIS).

Reporting of summary information from the SIS on how the UNFCCC REDD+ safeguards have been addressed and respected should take place periodically in national communications to the UNFCCC in order to be eligible for results based payments, which can come from a wide variety of sources, including public, private, bilateral and multilateral sources. As most target countries are only beginning to consider how they would put in place such a SlS, whilst meeting multiple safeguard requirements, the ‘Ensuring operationalisation of safeguard requirements to obtain RBF from sustainable national REDD+ policies’ project aims to assist Vietnam, Ghana and Peru in REDD+ readiness, to put in place a SIS and meet multiple safeguard requirements to be eligible for results-based payments.

The project, funded by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety (BMUB), will be implemented between December 2015 and November 2018 in Vietnam, Ghana and Peru, three key regional hub countries that are relatively advanced in terms of proceeding towards REDD+ implementation. This project builds on the work carried out under the Delivering Multiple Environmental and Social Benefits from REDD+ in Se Asia (MB-REDD) project also funded by BMUB (2013-2016). SNV, through the MB-REDD project provided a crucial leadership role on the important issue of safeguards in REDD+ in Vietnam, including the development of a country safeguards approach (CSA) and REDD+ safeguards roadmap for Vietnam.

This project will contribute to climate change mitigation by establishing a SIS system and operationalizing safeguards, which are prerequisites for obtaining results-based payments from a wide variety of sources, including public, private, bilateral and multilateral sources. This will allow Ghana, Vietnam and Peru to receive funds to protect their forests, ultimately leading to reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.

The project promotes a country-led safeguards approach (CSA) that responds to national and international safeguards commitments by building upon a country’s existing governance system: its legal, institutional and compliance frameworks. Rather than building an entirely new system, the CSA provides a framework for specifying international safeguards according to the country context and anchoring them to the governance system (through the identification of relevant laws, the institutions responsible for their implementation, as well as for monitoring and compliance) so as to ensure that they are implemented and legally enforceable. The CSA aims to be comprehensive enough to allow a country to effectively ensure systematic implementation of and compliance with the UNFCCC REDD+ safeguards, and demonstrate such compliance through a SIS.

The project will have two key overall outcomes:

• Immediate Intended Outcome: Three regional hub country governments – Vietnam, Ghana and Peru – are eligible for results-based payments through the establishment of country-led safeguard systems and improved institutional capacity for REDD+ safeguards implementation, monitoring and reporting at national and sub-national levels.

• Wider Learning Outcome: An important further outcome is improved technical knowledge among REDD+ countries in the three regions on how to implement a country-led safeguards approach (CSA) to meet and operationalise multiple REDD+ safeguard requirements

The project works along four work packages:

1. Developing and disseminating global knowledge products and country best practices.

2. Developing and operationalising comprehensive Country-Led Safeguard Approaches, including national SlS.

3. Introducing subnational Low-Emissions Development Plans (LEDPs), which are sub-national plans for REDD+ or reducing emissions from forest and land-use change representing strategies for addressing local drivers of deforestation in coordination with the country safeguard approach.

4. Incorporating Participatorv Forest Monitoring (PFM) into National Forest Monitoring Systems (NFMS) and examine its potential contribution to national SlS.

The project is designed to contribute to sustainable development at national policy, subnational planning and site-based activity levels; and designed to use target countries as regional hubs to promote and allow for context-specific replication in other countries/landscapes.