Countries are leading the way

Country-level progress this year on forest conservation and sustainable landscapes was inspiring.

Chile, Ghana, Mexico, Nepal, and Republic of Congo are ready to implement ambitious strategies to reduce deforestation and forest degradation while enhancing their forest carbon stocks—efforts commonly referred to as REDD+. Each of these countries had their REDD+ readiness packages endorsed in 2016 by the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility Readiness Fund. The Fund also endorsed additional support for Cambodia, Cote d'Ivoire, Madagascar and Nicaragua.

Once countries are “REDD+ ready”, they can move into implementation with further support from FCPF’s Carbon Fund. In June, Costa Rica and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) became the first countries to present large-scale emission reduction programs to the Carbon Fund. These are ground-breaking programs that open the door to some of the first performance-based payments for reduced emissions in their countries. And just this week, Chile and Mexico followed suit. Having surpassed $1 billion in fund capital in 2016, confidence in the FCPF is as strong as it’s ever been.

With support from the World Bank Group’s BioCarbon Fund Initiative for Sustainable Forest Landscapes (ISFL), Colombia, Ethiopia and Zambia also made significant progress in 2016. Ethiopia finalized its ISFL program design for Oromia state, which includes 6.5 million hectares of vulnerable forest. Colombia prepared an ISFL program for its Orinoquía region to help sustainably manage this area’s precious wetlands, grasslands and forests. And Zambia set up an ISFL program in its Eastern Province to focus on improving land use planning, climate-smart agriculture, rural energy generation, and regulations to enhance the sustainable management of forests and wildlife.

Forest stakeholders are more skilled, more engaged

With all this new support, it was important in 2016 to step up capacity building, so that countries have the financial and technical resources to move plans into action. In April, FCPF kicked off a successful regional training series on technical forest monitoring in Thailand, and continued the series in Peru in July, and Ethiopia in September. FCPF also supported a unique south-south exchange between Mexico and Ethiopia in June, to facilitate learning on approaches to community-led forestry initiatives, forest restoration, payment for environmental services, and emission reduction program design and implementation.

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