Story | 06 Aug, 2013

IUCN and The Forests Dialogue Latest REDD+ Benefit Sharing Discussion Summary Report Now Available

The Co-chairs’ summary report highlights key issues, questions, conclusions and next steps related to REDD+ Benefit Sharing mechanisms, discussed by an international group of experts at the latest scoping dialogue on REDD+ benefit sharing.

Photo: The Forests Dialogue

The concise, seven-page co-chairs’ report entitled “Scoping Dialogue on REDD+ Benefit Sharing” provides a comprehensive overview of the major outcomes from The Forests Dialogue and IUCN’s latest two-day scoping discussion. The dialogue, which took place in March in Washington D.C., brought together 40 experts representing a broad range of stakeholders from national governments, NGOs, indigenous peoples and community groups, inter-governmental organizations and academia.

The event was co-chaired by Chris Buss of IUCN, Diji Chandrasekharan of World Bank and Ghan Shyam Pandey of Global Alliance of Community Forestry.

The March dialogue is the first scoping exercise for the REDD+ Benefit Sharing Initiative, which aims to: develop and understand the current state of developing REDD+ Benefit Sharing in several key countries, build a community of practice among local REDD+ practitioners, and promote appropriate economic, policy and institutional arrangements at the local, national and international levels to facilitate equitable REDD+ benefit sharing mechanisms.

Key issues discussed included how REDD+ Benefit Sharing should be designed and implemented, given the changing economic conditions, the unclear future of global carbon market and the divergent stakeholder’s interpretations of what constitutes effective, efficient and equitable benefit sharing for REDD+.

Key questions to be further addressed included how to communicate concepts and perspectives related to REDD+ Benefit Sharing among different stakeholders in order to deliver clear and consistent messages, what can be done in the immediate term to identify and work with beneficiaries when legal rights are unclear and how to reduce the costs of REDD+.

Conclusions and next steps
This scoping exercise examined the current status of dialogue and some of the issues involved in the design and implementation of REDD+ Benefit Sharing, given the wide spectrum of stakeholder from a variety of background and perspectives. The implementation of equitable REDD+ is complex as it involves integration of local context , governance and development on a national scale and global capacity building.

The Foresst Dialogue will continue to focus on country-specific contexts through in-county field dialogues, in order to explore and learn from existing projects on Benefit Sharing. The information gathered, could provide the ways forward with respect to the design and implementation of REDD+ Benefit Sharing, at national and sub-national levels.

The next field dialogue is tentatively scheduled for September 2013, in Vietnam.

Download the full Co-chair summary report

For more on IUCN's REDD+ work:

Website: www.iucn.org/redd
Twitter: @IUCN_redd IUCN’s REDD+ Roundup newsletter: Subscribe here

Downloads: