As several countries around the world busily keep moving forward with their REDD+ readiness plans, the supporting UN-REDD and World Bank Programs will be meeting next week in Vietnam to take stock and consider some important new proposals. For the UN-REDD Programme, look for the Policy Board to review the UN-REDD Fund’s performance over the past year as well as consider a pivotal step towards international principles and criteria for REDD+ safeguards. For the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility, safeguards will also be on the menu, but tailored more for fund managers who will be delivering REDD+ financing.
Back on the voluntary side, VCS is keeping on at full throttle, releasing VCS Version 3, standard-wide guidance that updates the earlier VCS 2007.1. The update includes several important changes for forest projects, responding to the 480 individual comments received during the public commenting period, of which a majority focused on issues related to AFOLU. Do we need to look further for yet another sign that 2011 will be a big year for forestry and other land use projects?
On the project development side, we saw the first VCS-registered forest project pop on the map in South America, and also the successful validation from the first CDM forest project in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Unfortunately these good tidings for the DRC are also met with news that 15 million hectares of land previously off-limits to logging operations are now open for new concessions, reversing the principle of a standing moratorium on concessions to combat illegal logging and associated corruption.
All in all, we’re seeing no shortage of progress on the REDD+ front while voluntary standards continue tuning up for bigger markets and projects keep on full-steam ahead.
Read about all these stories and more in Ecosystem Marketplace’s latest issue of the Forest Carbon Newsletter.
