As climate talks hit the halfway point, negotiators have pushed further talk of safeguards for REDD+ back to June, 2015, in order to focus on creating a framework for Intended Nationally-Determined Contributions to halt climate change. We sat down with some of our trusted sources to find out where they felt REDD and INDCs stood.
Ecuador and Colombia now have the chance to earn $65 million each for reducing deforestation over the next three years, courtesy of new financial commitments from Norway and Germany. The four countries signed a joint statement today, significantly expanding Germany’s REDD Early Movers program that pays for performance.
At the UN Climate Change Conference in Lima, five countries have submitted forest data that will be the basis for establishing reference levels. Brazil submitted its reference levels in the summer, and received approval last week.
Brazil’s Missionary Council for Indigenous Peoples (CIMI) has arguably done more than any other single organization to help indigenous people demarcate their lands, but many indigenous leaders say their onetime protector has become paternalistic and possessive. Last week, after CIMI attacked the Surui Forest Carbon Project, indigenous leaders took to Facebook and launched a campaign that could go all the way to the Vatican.
UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres sees a key role for markets in verifying that the emissions reductions promised by countries in upcoming climate plans are actually achieved. The new bottom-up approach to the climate negotiations means that the era of carbon market experimentation underway in California, China, South Africa, and other places is likely to continue.
The existing Clean Development Mechanism and Joint Implementation offset programs could and should be folded into the post-2020 international climate agreement being negotiated in Lima this week and in Paris in 2015, according to market observers. But they need some work first.
Most indigenous people have resisted the temptation to chop their forests for gain leaving them short of development largesse, but also in the lurch when it comes to financing programs aimed at saving forests that are clearly in danger. Now a new peer-reviewed paper says more than half the land under indigenous protection is, in fact, endangered and indigenous leaders say REDD finance can help them avert disaster.
The 20th meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is underway in Lima, Peru and Ecosystem Marketplace is on hand to cover it. This year, the process has been turned on its head as countries transitioned from trying to negotiate a top-down agreement to building a bottom-up framework based on “Intended Nationally Determined Contributions,” or INDCs.
Indigenous people have moved from the fringes to the center of climate talks in Lima, but how do indigenous “life plans and climate fit together? That’s the focus of a Thursday side event in Lima. Streamed live, the event will focus on the work of a small but influential consortium of NGOs and indigenous organizations moving REDD forward.
Voluntary initiatives and integration were big topics of the biodiversity space in 2014. In the US, regulators and landowners grappled with new methods to protect dwindling species population in the face of encroaching development. Meanwhile, the international world continued to push for meaningful biodiversity conservation through a merging of agendas.