South Korea - The Green Climate Fund (GCF) recently adopted two new decisions intended to reduce global emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, as well as to support forest restoration and conservation in developing countries via REDD+.

These two new decisions relate to:

• The GCF’s role in financing development of policies and preparatory activities in developing countries; and
• The GCF’s policy related to making payments for verified emission reductions achieved through such policies and measures.

 CONTEXT OF THE GCF

It has been a long trek to get to this point at the international level. The work on REDD+ started as early as 2005, and the international framework was finalized between 2013 and 2015. The UN Climate Convention Standing Committee on Finance has more recently been undertaking work to move the finance discussion forward since 2014 and much groundwork has been done through initiatives led by the World Bank, UNDP, UNEP and the FAO, such as the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility and the UN-REDD Programme.

Since efforts to curb forest loss and restore and conserve forests commenced through REDD+, there has been more than USD $6 billion provided to countries across Asia, Africa and Central and South America- mostly on behalf of the governments of Norway, Germany, the U.K. and the U.S. Now, more funding (likely several hundreds of millions of USD), is expected to come from the GCF.

However, despite all these efforts, only one country- Brazil- has been able to show a decrease in deforestation. But this trend has been reversed with a recent growth in deforestation. The complexities associated with REDD+ and its lack of emissions reductions results has thus caused many to question the potential for the framework to mitigate climate change.

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