This document discusses opportunities and challenges for developing REDD+ benefit sharing mechanisms in developing countries. It identifies key issues such as governance arrangements, rights and tenure, monitoring and verification methods, stakeholder involvement, and measuring co-benefits. Designing equitable benefit sharing that incentivizes emissions reductions while recognizing local rights and costs will require balancing efficiency and equity considerations. The REDD+ Benefits Sharing project aims to provide guidance to improve benefit sharing mechanism design, development, and implementation.

1. Opportunities and challenges to
developing REDD+ benefit sharing
mechanisms in developing countries
R. Nasi, C. Luttrell, G. Wong, D.A. Wardell
“Mechanisms for measuring and delivering biodiversity
benefits from REDD+”
CBD COP11, Hyderabad, 15/10/2012

2. Forests are more than carbon

3. REDD+ and biodiversity
Source: Venter et al., 2009

4. Financing
Markets/non‐markets • Elucidating key drivers
Private vs. public of deforestation and
‘polluters pay’ and ‘historical degradation for
responsibility’
national settings
‘common but differentiated’
Governance and institutional • Institutional
arrangements configurations needed
Equitable redistribution for context‐specific
enabling environment
• Rights (access, use,
property) and tenure
issues

5. Monitoring, reporting and
verification
Reference levels or • Methods for integration of
Reference emission levels?
historical deforestation data with
Carbon accounting
knowledge of drivers of
 5 pools?
What to monitor?
deforestation to construct
 (C or C+ co‐benefits)? scenarios and provide reasonable
 Leakage? estimates of future emissions
 Finances? • Developing appropriate factors
Gross or net? and equations for project‐ and
national‐level carbon accounting
• Methods to address national and
subnational monitoring and
accounting

6. Stakeholder involvement
No consensus at the • Equity issues
moment…
– Indigenous people (IP) and minority
Compromise to make
groups
reference to the need to
engage local people? – Gender
• Defining conditions for
– Free, Prior and Informed Consent
– IP and communities involvement in
design and implementation
• Assessment of social implications
of addressing factors to ensure
successful REDD

7. Co-benefits
Keep REDD+ simple and use ‘do no • Develop objectively
harm’ standard?
verifiable and easily
Make REDD+ pro‐poor and pro‐
biodiversity?
measured indicators
Biodiversity or local interests might • Knowledge on context
conflict with ‘atmospheric’ specific synergies and
interests
tradeoffs
• Market research on
investors’ attitudes and
concerns about co‐
benefits

8. What do we measure
and how?
Standards
Indicators

9. Sustainable Forest REDD+ Project/Program Greenhouse Gas Accounting
Management Standards Design Standards Standards
Forest Stewardship Council
(FSC)
Programme for Endorsement
of Forest Certification (PEFC)
CCBA REDD+ Social & Environmental (S&E) Standards
Climate, Community and Biodiversity (CCB) Standards
CarbonFix Standard (CFS)
Global Conservation Standard (GCS)
Plan Vivo Standards
SOCIALCARBON Standard
ISO 14064:2006 Parts 2 and 3
Voluntary Carbon Standard
(VCS)
From Merger, Dutschke and Verchot 2010
THINKING beyond the canopy

10. Sustainable forest management
FSC PEFC
From Merger, Dutschke and Verchot 2010

11. Social‐economical
CCB REDD+ S&E CCB
From Merger, Dutschke and
Verchot 2010
SOCIALCARBON

12. Net GHG benefits
CarbonFix VCS and ISO 14064
From Merger, Dutschke and Verchot 2010

13. What do we mean by
‘benefit sharing’?
• Benefit sharing is the distribution of
direct and indirect net gains from the
implementation of REDD+
• Two types of direct benefits:
• Monetary gains from international
and national finance related to
REDD+
• Benefits associated with the
increased availability of forest
products & ecosystem services
• Indirect benefits e.g. improved
governance infrastructure provision

14. Benefits come with costs:
net benefits are what matter
Source: Lindhjem, H., Aronsen, I., Bråten, K.G.
and Gleinsvik, A. 2010 Experiences with
benefit sharing: issues and options for REDD‐
plus. Econ Pöyry, Oslo, Norway.

15. Who should benefit?
 There are tradeoffs involved in these
choice implied by the different discourses
which the implications for design of BSMs
Effectiveness/efficiency vs. equity
discourses
 Effectiveness/efficiency = goal of emission
reductions
 Equity = who has the right to benefit

16. Efficiency & Effectiveness
REDD+ as a mechanism for paying forest users & owners to reduce emissions:
• Focus on emissions reductions
• Payments as incentive for those who change in behaviour
• Benefits should go to people providing these services

17. “REDD benefits should reward large-scale
industries/companies for reducing forest emissions”
Data from CIFOR’s GCS’ policy network analysis by Maria Brockhaus (coordination), Levania Santosa &
Moira Moeliano (Indonesia), Maria Fernanda Gebara & Shaozeng Zhang (Brazil)

18. Equity discourses
Equity discourses take a distributional perspective and ask who are the actors
who have the „right“ to benefit from REDD+:
• Focus on preventing unfair distributional results
• Strengthening moral and political legitimacy of REDD+ mechanism

19. Equity Discourses
Benefits should go to:
• those with legal rights
• low emitting forest
stewards
• those incurring costs
• effective facilitators of
implementation

20. REDD+ Benefits Sharing
(a project funded by the European
Commission)

21. • To provide REDD+ policymakers and
practitioners with policy options and guidance
to improve the design, development and
implementation of REDD+ benefit sharing
mechanisms.
• Target groups:
– Policy makers in developing and developed
countries
– Governments of the six case study countries
– REDD+ project developers and investors

22. Project Structure
WP2: Outreach and dissemination
WP5: Review of existing performance‐based
mechanisms
WP3: WP6: WP7: WP1: Options
National
Costs‐ Multi‐level Rights to assessments of
benefits governance REDD+ mechanisms
of benefits
national
Local/ Sub‐ policies WP4:
national Costs‐
benefits
of sub‐
Project/ national
Household REDD+

23. Geographic coverage
Brazil Peru Tanzania Cameroon Indonesia Vietnam
•
WP 3 X X X
WP 4 X X X X X X
WP 5 X X X X X X
WP 6 X X X
WP 7 X X X

24. Further reading:
Luttrell et al. 2012. Who should benefit and why? Discourses on REDD+ benefit
sharing. Chapter 8 in Angelsen, A., Brockhaus, M., Sunderlin, W.D. and Verchot,
L.V. (eds) 2012 Analysing REDD+: Challenges and choices. CIFOR, Bogor, Indonesia.
Lindhjem et al. 2010. Experiences with benefit sharing: issues and options for
REDD‐plus. Econ Pöyry Oslo, Norway.