GCF REDD+ pilot pushes Paris momentum, according to COP23 side event

A new Green Climate Fund pilot for REDD+ results-based payments is helping put the Paris Agreement into action, participants at an event during the global Climate Change Conference heard.

“I believe it is a symbolic signal of rewarding early movers when it comes to REDD+,” said Tosi Mpanu-Mpanu, who works in the Prime Minister’s office of the Democratic Republic of Congo and is also a GCF Board member. “I think this decision of the GCF is a clear application and entry into action of article 5.2 of the Paris Agreement.”

Mr Mpanu-Mpanu made the comments during an information side event focusing on GCF and REDD+ at the 23rd Conference of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) currently convening in Bonn, Germany.

Article 5 of the Paris Agreement encourages countries under the UNFCCC to implement and support REDD+, including through results-based payments.

Last month, the GCF Board approved the pilot programme for REDD+ results-based payments. This is the third and final phase of REDD+ which provides assurance to funding providers that their finances result in substantial and verifiable reduction of greenhouse gases.

Tamaki Tsukada, also a GCF Board member who is a deputy assistant minister in Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told the side event that private finance is crucial in translating REDD+ into action on the ground.

“In order to scale up finance we have to think seriously about how we are going to mobilise private finance to create the opportunities, the incentives and the risk mitigation mechanism,” he said.

REDD+ was based on an idea where finance generated by a global market of trading emission reductions would fund the protection of forests. However, low prices for units of emission reduction and the failure, so far, of a global market trading emissions to materialize means REDD+ has morphed over time.

With GCF’s launch of the REDD+ results-based payments pilot, it now offers financial support for all phases of REDD, including through its Readiness and Preparatory Support Programme and Project Preparation Facility.

GCF’s incorporation of REDD+ in its growing climate finance portfolio follows ongoing moves to transform the climate finance concept into action on the ground, following years of negotiations.

GCF Executive Director Howard Bamsey said during the side event that a key attraction of REDD+ lay in the way it drives mitigation and improves people’s livelihoods at the same time.

REDD+ stands for supporting countries' efforts to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and foster conservation, sustainable management of forests, and enhancement of forest carbon stocks.