Presented by Pham Thu Thuy, from the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), at the Knowledge Sharing Event "Sharing Insights Across REDD+ Countries" in Georgetown, Guyana, on June 6, 2017.

1. CIFOR and
Global Comparative study on REDD+
Pham Thu Thuy on behalf of GCS-REDD+ team

2. Outline
 Who is CIFOR ?
 Global comparative
study on REDD+
 What we will do in
Guyana ?

3. WHAT IS CIFOR?
 Established in 1993
 a member of the CGIAR Consortium and leads the CGIAR Research
Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry
 Carry research on the most pressing challenges of forest and landscape
management around the world and support policymakers, practitioners and
communities make decisions based on solid science about how they use
and manage their forests and landscapes.
WHO IS CIFOR?

5. RESEARCH PRIORITIES AGENDA
Forests & Human Well Being
6 Thematic Areas :
Sustainable Landscapes
& Food
Equal Opportunities,
Gender, Justice, & Tenure
Climate change, Energy, &
Low-carbon Development
Value Chains, Finance, &
Investments
Forest Management
Restoration

6. WHY GCS- REDD+ ?

7. As an idea, REDD+ is a successstory
Significant result-based funding to address an urgent need for climate
change mitigation, cheap, quick and easy!

8. In reality, REDD+
faces huge
challenges • Powerful political and economic interests
• Coordination across various government
levels and agencies
• Trade-off/Benefits to balance
effectiveness and equity
• Tenure insecurity and safeguards must
be genuinely addressed
• Transparent institutions, reliable carbon
monitoring and realistic reference levels
to build result-based systems

9. THINKING beyond the canopy
CIFOR’s Global Comparative
Study (GCS-REDD+)
2009- 2020
• To support REDD+ policy arenas
and practitioner communities with
- information
- analysis
- tools
• so as to ensure 3E+ outcomes:
- effectiveness
- efficiency
- equity and co-benefits

10. Thanks to

11. THINKING beyond the canopy
CIFOR’s Global Comparative
Study (GCS-REDD+)
• Phase 1 (2009- 2012): focuses on overall
REDD+ design issues and building strong research-
based knowledge.
• Phase 2 (2012- 2015): analyzing nascent and
evolving policy processes and the actions of early
starters in developing REDD+ policies and
measures to inform and facilitate transformational
change.
• Phase 3 (2016 – 2020): focuses on the
assessment of policy design and actual impacts of
REDD+ policies and measures as a basis to
achieving results in the broader context of
landscape management, livelihood objectives and
equity considerations.

12. THINKING beyond the canopy
CIFOR’s Global Comparative Study (GCS-REDD+)
new research countries phase III: Myanmar, Guyana

13.  M1 (REDD+ policies) focuses on effective,
efficient and equitable (3E) REDD+
policies, and measures them at the
national level.
 M2 (REDD+ subnational initiatives)
focuses on assessing the performance of
REDD+ subnational initiatives.
 M3 (Measuring carbon emissions)
focuses on measuring carbon emissions
and determining forest and carbon
reference levels, and works on the
Monitoring, Measurement, Reporting and
Verification (MMRV) of forests and carbon.
 M4 (Multilevel governance) focuses on
understanding the synergies and trade-offs
in joint mitigation and adaptation, and
addresses the challenges of multilevel and
multi-sector governance and carbon
management.
 M5 (Knowledge sharing) is dedicated to
partner engagement and dissemination.

14. Module 1
REDD+
strategies,
policies and
measures
Political
economy lens
Findings: strong national ownership + already initiated policy changes and relevance of
available performance based funding may help countries to formulate REDD+ policies that are
likely deliver efficient, effective, and equitable outcomes

15. Module 1
REDD+
strategies,
policies and
measures
Political
economy lens

16. From REDD+ to Green Growth
Indonesia + Vietnam
 Old wine in new bottles
 Transformational
changes or business as
usual ?
 Dilution of REDD+
agenda and confusion
of green growth
strategy
 Drivers of deforestation
and degradation
remain untackled

17. THINKING beyond the canopy
• National level: strong political commitment but guidelines for policy and planning
treat the two approaches separately.
• Local level: integration of mitigation and adaptation is facilitated by subnational
autonomy, where mitigation projects might have adaptation co-benefits, and vice
versa.
• Successful integration of mitigation and adaptation policies would not only remove
contradictions between policies, but also encourage governments that are designing
domestic policies to exploit the potential for positive spillovers and realize the
benefits of both approaches.

18. Module 2: Subnational REDD+ Initiatives
Comparison
(Control)
REDD+ site
(Intervention)
Before After
IMPACT
Intervention
After
Control
After
Intervention
Before
Control
Before
2010 / 2011 2013 / 2014
• 6 countries
• 23 initiatives
• 150 villages
• 4,000
households
Methods described in detail in Technical Guidelines (Sunderlin et al. 2016)

19. Module 2: Subnational REDD+ Initiatives-
Key findings (Amy Duchelle et al. 2017)
 Minimal reduced tree cover loss at REDD+ sites; performance
appears worse in analysis without controls (Bos et al. in prep)
 3/4 of households at REDD+ sites subject to interventions; 65% of
those reported changes in land use (Resosudarmo et al. in prep)
 REDD+ initiatives in Indonesia located in high biodiversity areas
with lower than average carbon density (Murray et al. 2015)
REDD+ impacts on forests
REDD+ impacts on people
 No negative impacts on income and well-being, but also no
evidence of co-benefits (De Sassi et al. in prep; Sunderlin et al. in prep)
 Little advancement on tenure (Sunderlin et al. in review)

20. Module 3
Monitoring and Reference Levels
Improve
procedures &
practices for
estimating &
managing carbon
stocks
Hallmark:
Stepwise approach
to RELs & MRV
(considers
countries’
capacities)

22. Module 4: understanding the synergies and trade-offs in joint
mitigation and adaptation, and addresses the challenges of multilevel
and multi-sector governance and carbon management (Anne Larson et al.).
Village Village Village
Sub-district
Village
Sub-district
District
Province/ State/ Region
National
International e.g. donors
Horizontal
Vertical
• Who makes decisions and how
decisions are made, from the
international to national to local
level, including formal and
informal rules and institutions,
power relations and the practice
of decision making (Larson y Petkova
2011).
• Understand relationships between
actors at multiple levels (vertically)
and (horizontally) across sectors

23. Multilevel Challenges
(Anne Larson, Maria Brockhaus et al. 2016)
 Horizontal cross-sectoral challenges – identified as one of
the central challenges to REDD+ at the national level
(Brockhaus et al. 2014) – persist at the subnational level (Ravikumar
et al. 2015)
 Coordination issues (horizontal and vertical) related to
scattered and non-transparent data sharing are complicated
by divergent interests and needs around ‘technical issues’
(like MRV, Kowler and Larson 2016)
 Central government overrides subnational government
decisions, or subnational governments ignore central
directives – and powerful actors often find a way to get what
they want
 Projects often target proximate but not the underlying
deforestation/ degradation drivers (Kijazi, forthcoming)

24. Politics of swidden in Vietnam
(Pham et al. forthcoming)
National level: major of deforestation and forest degradation and
needs to be eliminated
Provincial level: persistence of swidden as a failure of political
performance
District level: a way to retain national security at border areas
Commune and village level: traditional practice to harmonize different
groups and avoid protest from ethnic groups to government system
Household level: a normal practice to ensure food security

25. WHAT WE WILL DO IN GUYANA ?
 M1: carry out research on national REDD+ policies and process
 M3: support sstakeholders to have better data and assessments on
mitigation policy options and the role of forests in setting country targets
and planning mitigation activities in the broader land use sector (all levels)
and support MMRV capacity
 M5: Knowledge sharing

26. We acknowledge the support from:
the Norwegian Agency for Development
Cooperation (Norad), the Australian
Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade
(DFAT), the European Union (EU), the UK
Government, USAID, the International
Climate Initiative (IKI) of the German Federal
Ministry for the Environment, Nature
Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety
(BMUB) and the CGIAR Research Program on
Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (CRP-FTA)
with financial support from the CGIAR Fund.
& all research partners and individuals
that have contributed to the GCS research
Thanks
Further information, please contact:
 Christopher Martius (Project leader): c.martius@cgiar.org
 Pham Thu Thuy (M1 lead): t.pham@cgiar.org
 Amy Duchelle (M2 lead): a.duchelle@cgiar.org
 Nikki De Sy (M3 lead): niki.desy@wur.nl
 Anne Larson (M4 lead): a.larson@cgiar.org
 Shelley Thakral (M5 lead): S.Thakral@cgiar.org