WARSAW, POLAND - 21 NOVEMBER, 2013 - At the 19th UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP19) this week, the Government of Norway announced a pledge of US$ 40 million to continue support for the UN-REDD Programme. The package of funding will support a range of programmes in 2014 to reduce deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) across 48 UN-REDD partner countries, in collaboration with governments, indigenous peoples and civil society, and with the joint support of FAO, UNDP and UNEP.
As parties to the UNFCCC continued negotiations over a climate change agreement into a second week, in a UN Chief Executive Board for Coordination (CEB) side event Norway reaffirmed its confidence in UN-REDD and in REDD+'s transformative potential to slow climate change and benefit local communities and biodiversity. The side event explored how lessons from UN-REDD's first five years may be applied in the scaling up of REDD+ to the global level.
"UN-REDD countries are moving from the REDD+ readiness phase to payments for results," said Norway's State Secretary, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Hans Brattskar. "It is great that UN-REDD has gotten this far in five years."
The UN-REDD Programme is turning Norway's visionary commitment into broad advances to protect and manage the world's forests and enhance their contribution to sustainable development. Since 2008, in response to developing countries' demands for support to build capacity to meet UNFCCC requirements for REDD+, the Programme has expanded from 9 to 48 nations containing 56 per cent of the world's tropical forests.
Pak Heru Prasetyo, Deputy Head of the Indonesian President's Delivery Unit for Development Monitoring and Oversight, cited UN-REDD's value in forging a coalition between sustainable development and climate change. "For the transformation we need, UN-REDD is not business as usual."
The Programme's environmental gains are designed to be socially equitable, as a key focus of UN-REDD is the inclusion and empowerment of indigenous peoples and civil society organizations.
"One of UN-REDD's most important achievements has been to put safeguards in place for the engagement of indigenous communities, to ensure their full and effective participation in governance," said Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, Founder and Executive Director of Tebtebba Foundation and the former Chair of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.
Norway's pledge will provide funding for the Programme's support to countries improving governance and technical skills, such as forest carbon measurement, and for its global activities to develop common approaches and share knowledge between partner countries.
"UN-REDD provides an antidote to those who think that international climate negotiations are failing to bear fruit," said Achim Steiner, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme. "Norway, along with partners like Indonesia, deserve credit for systematically and sustainably supporting this initiative with financial and political capital."
For more information, please contact David Eastman at the UN-REDD Secretariat (david.eastman@un-redd.org).
