Happy International Women’s Day!

Dear UN-REDD,

Today on International Women’s Day, we are celebrating with a special newsletter that includes stories about the importance of ensuring that women’s perspectives are integrated into forest-related, decision-making processes. Including women’s perspectives is crucial to solving the problem of degradation and forest loss. Understanding this contribution is necessary to have a more accurate analysis of the problem of degradation and forest loss. It has been demonstrated that women’s effective participation in community-based forest governance leads to better outcomes.

The article on the PIREDD project in RDC, for example, demonstrates a project that is working towards ambitious goals to holistically address the drivers of deforestation, while also tackling the underlying concerns of rural livelihoods, land and resource governance, wood energy use and family planning.

We open this issue with NICFI’s answer to the article that appeared in the Guardian last January that concluded that the majority of REDD+ project baselines were overstated. According to NICFI, “We will not meet our climate goals without urgently addressing deforestation. Voluntary carbon markets offer the most promising opportunity to quickly unlock unprecedented levels of private finance in support of forest countries efforts to reduce emissions from deforestation. To do that, the market must finance the actions that reduce emissions at scale, without leakage and double counting, and with manageable transaction costs.”

Happy reading and happy International Women’s Day!

Read our multi-media story

PERSPECTIVES

How carbon markets done right help stop deforestation

To stay within our climate targets we must halt tropical forest loss within this decade. A well-functioning, high-quality forest carbon market that pays for reduced forest emissions at the national or state level – as agreed by all countries under the Paris Agreement – is essential to achieve this goal.

STORIES

Ghana receives its first payment for emissions reductions

Following Mozambique, Ghana received payments from a World Bank trust fund for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation also known as REDD+. The Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) paid Ghana $4,862,280 for reducing 972,456 tons of CO₂ emissions for the first monitoring period of the programme

The UN-REDD National Programme in Colombia bears fruit with the National Forest Inventory (NFI)

Colombia has a total of 59.5 million hectares of natural forest, making up 52.1 percent of the country’s territory. It is one of the countries with the greatest natural forest cover in Latin America, along with a high diversity of flora and fauna.

Building Carbon Markets that Work for Africa: Reflections from a Chatham House dialogue

Countries are increasingly examining the potential of carbon markets to close the significant gap in climate finance in Africa. In February, the Chatham House Africa Programme hosted a webinar to discuss the practical implications of carbon markets for countries and the private sector, and what needs to happen on the ground, including capacity building to ensure Paris Agreement compatibility.

Gender Gains: Making progress towards empowering women through REDD+ implementation in DRC

In the heart of the Congo, in the northwest province of Equateur in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a small, mostly Congolese team has been diligently tackling the myriad challenges of implementing REDD+ measures and actions, while concurrently striving to actively involve women and ensure their equitable benefits.

Better Data for Better Decisions

It is common knowledge that data and information are key elements for sound decisions and policies. This is true also in the forestry sector. The UN-REDD Programme’s Lower Mekong Initiative works with countries to strengthen awareness and technical capacity to collect, develop and use data and monitoring systems in order to keep the pulse of the sustainability and legality of forest product trade and production.

Ecuador shares experiences on deforestation-free production with Vietnam

When the drivers of deforestation are buried deep in the supply chain, innovative and collaborative solutions are required. Reducing deforestation is a crucial pathway not only for attending to new market regulations and trends but also for ensuring the sustainability of production.

Strengthening the forestry legal framework in Ghana

In an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, protect biodiversity and promote sustainable development, the Government of Ghana has signed numerous international and regional agreements. Some of these include the three instruments of the Rio Conference (UNFCCC, CBD, UNCCD), the Kyoto Protocol (1997), the Paris Agreement (2015), and the Kigali Agreement (2016).

How the Mexican Lilac tree is helping with large-scale ecosystem restoration on Timor

Most of the primary rainforest on the island of Timor has disappeared. One of the challenges on Timor has been that geological processes have generated inherently infertile, high-alkaline clay formations resulting in heavy clays as well soils developed on limestone formation.

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Smallholders and Micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs):

Making the timber trade equitable, profitable and sustainable

Micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) face challenges all the way across the supply chain, from producers to processors. One way to address many challenges is to promote more long-term producer-processor relationships to promote mutual understanding and working towards solutions.

Transformational change of forest product value chains

In 2022, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN (FAO) FAO and the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO) under the UN-REDD Lower Mekong Initiative explored the notion of transformational change in the forest product value chain in the Lower Mekong Region.