Latest Paris Text Shows Emergence of a REDD+ Package

Climate Forests Dec 9, 2015
Gustavo A. Silva-Chávez

The latest draft Paris agreement text released today shows that negotiators have made significant progress this week. Since the ADP co-chairs released the last version on Sunday, we’ve seen major reductions in the number of pages (from 47 to 29), options, and brackets (down 79%). And when the text was presented to countries today, no one immediately objected to the text – a good sign, history shows. Countries and NGOs are currently reviewing the draft agreement, and they will reconvene tonight at 8:00 p.m. to discuss.

The REDD+ section (Article 3bis) contains completely new text, and we are beginning to see the clear emergence of a REDD+ package. The first sentence clearly calls for all countries to “conserve and enhance…sinks and reservoirs of GHG” — this is UN speak for forests — and makes a clear reference to the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Making such an unequivocal reference to the Convention clearly signals its importance in the overall text.

Although the acronym REDD+ does not appear, the official title (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) is clearly in here. At the end of the paragraph there are explicit references to previous COP REDD+ decisions, including the Warsaw Framework. It looks short and simple on paper, but this paragraph is the ‘on’ switch for REDD+.

Given that there’s still one more set of brackets remaining, we can’t yet say that REDD+ is part of the Paris agreement.

There’s a lot going on behind the scenes as countries digest the new text delivered in the afternoon. Stay tuned to see what happens tonight at 8:00 p.m. when ministers and negotiators reconvene to discuss it. In the mean time, weigh in on our ongoing terminology poll:

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