Getting ready for REDD+ in Tanzania: a case study of progress and challenges

Abstract

The proposed mechanism for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) offers significant potential for conserving forests to reduce negative impacts of climate change. Tanzania is one of nine pilot countries for the United Nations REDD Programme, receives significant funding from the Norwegian, Finnish and German governments and is a participant in the World Bank's Forest Carbon Partnership Facility. In combination, these interventions aim to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, provide an income to rural communities and conserve biodiversity. The establishment of the UN-REDD Programme in Tanzania illustrates real-world challenges in a developing country. These include currently inadequate baseline forestry data sets (needed to calculate reference emission levels), inadequate government capacity and insufficient experience of implementing REDD+-type measures at operational levels. Additionally, for REDD+ to succeed, current users of forest resources must adopt new practices, including the equitable sharing of benefits that accrue from REDD+ implementation. These challenges are being addressed by combined donor support to implement a national forest inventory, remote sensing of forest cover, enhanced capacity for measuring, reporting and verification, and pilot projects to test REDD+ implementation linked to the existing Participatory Forest Management Programme. Our conclusion is that even in a country with considerable donor support, progressive forest policies, laws and regulations, an extensive network of managed forests and increasingly developed locally-based forest management approaches, implementing REDD+ presents many challenges. These are being met by coordinated, genuine partnerships between government, non-government and community-based agencies.

Sustainable Management of Tropical Forests Can Reduce Carbon Emissions and Stabilize Timber Production

“…As unsustainable logging, industrial agriculture and smallholder subsistence crop cultivation, and agricultural cultivation continue to destroy and degrade tropical forests and biodiversity, international efforts to protect the forests began to show promising results. The roles of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation PLUS (REDD+), which includes conservation of forests, sustainable management, and enhancement of forest carbon stocks, were fully recognized in the Copenhagen Accord adopted at the 15th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP15) to the UNFCCC in December 2009 (Burgess et al, 2010). Under the Warsaw Framework for REDD+ at COP 19, the need to protect tropical forests for climate change mitigation was further encouraged by offering result-based financial incentives to developing countries for reducing carbon emissions under REDD+ (Norman et al, 2014).…”

Allometric Models for Estimating Tree Volume and Aboveground Biomass in Lowland Forests of Tanzania

“…In Tanzania, lowland forests are located close to the Indian Ocean, and occasionally further inland up to the base of the Eastern Arc Mountains below 1000 m above sea level, often embedded within larger areas of miombo woodlands and Montane/humid forests [1]. The total area covered by lowland forest in Tanzania is estimated to be about 1.7 mil.…”

REDD+ in West Africa: Politics of Design and Implementation in Ghana and Nigeria

“…Reviews of REDD+ cases across several countries have shown capacity building to be a central objective which issues from international guidelines on REDD+ [10]. However, literature also shows the great deal of financial, technical and administrative resources being devoted to capacity building for REDD+ is not translating to commensurate improvement in local and national capacity, thereby pointing to the motley of factors that shape capacity building processes [6,41,65,92]. Part of the problem, Lund et al [41] argue in their analysis of Tanzania, is the inherent and insidiously alienating technicality and complexity of REDD+ which "did not fall from the sky" but has been produced through the self-interested and self-reproducing ways in which actors in the state, civil society and international organisations project REDD+ [30,43,93].…”

“…For instance, in one extensive review of the capacity of 99 countries to engage in REDD+ [65] found that "very large capacity gaps were observed in forty-nine countries, mostly in Africa". This and many other studies have called for institutional and technical capacity for countries as a key focus of implementation of REDD+ [41,92].…”