Greening REDD+ - challenges and opportunities for integrating biodiversity safeguards at and across policy levels.

摘要

Fuelled by the continuing destruction of forests in developing countries and by the unsatisfactory success of previous efforts to curb these developments, since 2005 the aspired REDD+ mechanism and its implementation under the UNFCCC evolved into one of the major issues in the negotiations on a successor agreement for the Kyoto Protocol. Initially, it was often assumed that by successfully reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, biodiversity and other ecosystem services would benefit automatically. However, the more the scope of the mechanism was widened, the more obvious it became that REDD+ would not necessarily generate additional benefits, but would also entail considerable risks for policy objectives related to the conservation of forest biodiversity. As there are many different challenges associated with the integration of biodiversity issues into REDD+ design and implementation across different policy levels, the aim of the study is to elaborate and discuss feasible options to overcome these problems. While the globally initiated REDD+ mechanism appears as a classical topdown approach, it may be assumed to follow the logic of a multi-level governance issue, i.e. dispersed across multiple territorial and jurisdictional tiers. Regarding the international REDD+ policy design, agreeing on clear definitions of forest related terms are key, as they are important not only in the UNFCCC context, but also for a common basis with other conventions. Further challenges concern the development of well-defined criteria and measurable indicators for "sustainable management of forests", safeguards addressing (but not restricted to) the risk of inter-ecosystem leakage, and monitoring of the impacts of REDD+ on biodiversity. At the national level, important challenges include setting sound biodiversity objectives, the formulation of a comprehensive, integrative national land use plan, as well as monitoring and reporting the impact of policies, defined safeguards and additional benefits. These tasks are also intricately linked to the documentation of the impacts of REDD+ activities on biodiversity on all levels, for which beneficiary countries can draw on a plethora of pilot activities and existing work. Impact monitoring is a crucial basis for evaluating and potentially readjusting the mechanism, e.g. regarding the eligible activities or the modalities of compensation payments. Finally, several multilateral institutions and related processes currently evolving have significant potential to improve cross-level integration and to prepare the ground for effective governance of REDD+.