Speakers at an ITTO side-event say it is time to scale up resources and south–south cooperation to ensure countries have the capacity to use comparable methodologies in the measurement, reporting and verification phase of REDD+. The side-event was held on 17 November in Marrakech, Morocco, at the 22nd session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

According to speakers at the side-event, which was titled “Enabling results-based payments for REDD+ in tropical forests: lessons from reference setting”, more capacity and resources are needed to sustain and improve the quality of forest reference emission levels (FRELs) and forest reference levels (FRLs) for achieving Article 5 of the Paris Agreement, which focuses on the role of forests in addressing mitigation and adaptation challenges.

The following REDD+ experts spoke at the side-event:

• Dr Maria Jose Sanchez, Scientific Director, Basque Centre for Climate Change, Spain.
• Dr Yasumasa Hirata, Director, REDD+ Research and Development Center, Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute, Japan.
• Ms Novia Widyaningtyas, Head of REDD+ Division, Directorate General of Climate Change, Ministry of Environment and Forestry, Indonesia.
• Dr Elizabeth Philip, Forest Research Institute Malaysia, Malaysia.
• Mr MRV/FRL Focal point, Cambodia REDD+ Programme, Ministry of Environment, Cambodia.
• Mr Kwame Agyei, Senior Manager, National REDD+ Secretariat, Forestry Commission, Ghana.

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