WWF Guide to Building REDD+ Strategies

© © WWF-CANON / MIKE GOLDWATER
intRoduCtion
the design and implementation of
national and subnational REDD+
strategies will pose significant new legal
challenges for tropical forest nations.
In many counties this will mean an overhaul
of existing national and subnational legislation,
including the development of new legal
systems, adaptation of existing laws to changing
circumstances and abolishment of inappropriate
policies and incentives. While some
precedents exist, for example through
payments for ecosystem services (PES)
programmes and other markets for environmental
services, rarely have these been
implemented at the scale and pace envisioned
for REDD+. This process will therefore require
careful consideration, including the consultation
and engagement of a broad range of
national and international stakeholders to
ensure the effective, efficient and equitable
design of these policies and laws.
The design and implementation of legal
frameworks for REDD+ will entail a range of
subjective, and often controversial, decisions
about rights, benefits and decision-making
powers as well as a purely legal set of questions
over how those decisions should be implemented.
A coherent network of laws will be
required, beyond just environmental and
forest laws, including agricultural, infrastructure
and development laws, that will ideally
be capable of adapting to changes and
developments in science, economics
and policy.
Given the often poor levels of forest governance
in developing countries, legal reform
will also require vastly enhanced implementation
and enforcement of forest laws.
Furthermore, the large sums of finance
expected to be delivered through REDD+ will
require well-crafted fiduciary frameworks to
ensure the sustained delivery of global
objectives.
Finally, there will be implicit trade-offs in the
complexities and urgency in implementing
REDD+. While it will be important to begin
work immediately on the design, implementation
and enforcement of REDD+ legal
frameworks to ensure that emissions reduction
efforts begin promptly, these will require
long-term and dedicated efforts to fully
resolve. In the interim, provisional adaptive
measures would allow REDD+ activities at
the national and subnational levels to
commence while longer-term solutions are
being developed.
inteRnational PoliCy Context
A variety of international laws
are relevant to the implementation
of REDD+ legal
frameworks at the national
and subnational levels. While
the United Nations Framework Convention
on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has been the
primary standard-setting body for REDD+,
other international conventions play a key
role in setting the context within which other
objectives of REDD+, e.g. the right to
participation, are implemented.
COP 16: Cancun, 2010
At the 16th Conference of the Parties to
UNFCCC (COP 16), in Cancun in 2010, the
UNFCCC made specific reference, in its
decisions, that REDD+ should be “consistent
with the objectives of national forest
programmes and relevant international
conventions and agreements”. 1 These
decisions, collectively known as The Cancun
Agreements, also placed a strong emphasis
on stakeholder engagement. Under the
shared vision it was agreed that a broad range
of stakeholders should be engaged “at the
global, regional, national and local levels,
be they government, private business or civil
society, including youth and persons with
disability, and that gender equality and the
effective participation of women and indigenous
peoples are important for effective
action on all aspects of climate change”. 2
This position was further reinforced under
the decision on REDD+, which stated that
“developing country Parties, when developing
and implementing their national strategies
or action plans [should ensure] the full and
effective participation of relevant stakeholders,
inter alia indigenous peoples and local
communities”. 3 Parties in Cancun also agreed
to certain safeguards relating to the “knowledge
and rights of indigenous peoples and
members of local communities” 4 as referred
to in the Social and Environmental
Safeguards chapter.
Multilateral REDD+ initiatives
The Forest Carbon Partnership Facility
(FCPF), whose secretariat is the World Bank,
and UN-REDD Programme have developed
a range of guidance on the effective engagement
of stakeholders in REDD+. Arguably
the most important of these are the joint
UN-REDD and FCPF Guidelines on
Stakeholder Engagement (UN-REDD
WWF FOREST AND CLIMATE INITIATIVE leGal and ReGulatoRy FRameWoRkS // 28