Annual report

EU REDD Facility: Highlights from 2022

Developing solutions to tackle drivers of deforestation

At the EU REDD Facility, we help tropical forest countries to implement their commitments under the Paris Agreement on climate change; and to improve land-use governance as part of their efforts to slow, halt and reverse deforestation. The Facility has three objectives:

Past investments of the EU REDD Facility in country and thematic work have generated a range of tested tools and approaches available to stakeholders in partner countries. They are increasing being used by our beneficiaries and partners to strengthen stakeholder dialogue and inform decision-making on sustainable land use, commodity production and trade. Renewed political commitment through the Glasgow Leaders´ Declaration on Forests and Land Use and regulatory developments to minimise EU-driven deforestation and forests degradation, allow us to further scale up our actions with partner countries and grow innovative partnerships with public and private actors.

This report presents highlights from the Facility’s work in 2022. Our activities focused on South-East Asia (Indonesia and Vietnam), Africa (Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of the Congo) and Latin America (Colombia and Ecuador). Some of our work is also showcased in blogposts and our Transparency Pathway Insights series.

Highlights

Facilitating participatory planning processes to assist jurisdictions transitioning to sustainable land use

The Facility further advanced subnational and participatory land-use planning approaches in the Republic of the Congo, Côte d’Ivoire and Cameroon. In the Republic of the Congo, we developed a methodology for departmental-level land-use planning, integrating stakeholders’ comments and interim lessons learnt from the pilot carried out in the Mindouli District. In Côte d’Ivoire, the development and implementation of a locally adapted methodology for village-level planning are underway in collaboration with the Planning Ministry. The methodology will include a spatial component to facilitate inclusive decision making. In Cameroon, the Ministry of Economy, Planning and Land Planning and the Ministry of Decentralisation and Local Development validated the local-level land-use planning methodology. However, whether the local land-use plans are binding on third parties and how they will articulate with the departmental land-use plans are still debated. We tested the methodology, with a first municipal land-use plan developed in Mbangassina, informing government stakeholders and technical and financial partners’ upcoming efforts in support of local land-use planning.

To scale up the impact of its work, the Facility shared key lessons of its participatory land- use planning experience: with the Central African Forest Initiative (CAFI) secretariat, EU Delegations and technical partners designing and implementing large-scale programmes in the Republic of the Congo, DRC and Cameroon; at the annual conference of the Congo Basin Forest Partnership; and at the Forest Governance Forest Forum in Brazzaville. With the CAFI secretariat, an impulse paper was developed on the enabling conditions for sustainable land use in the Congo Basin. At the request of several Land-use Planner practitioners, a self-training package was developed as well as a new spatial module. A beta version of the module can be used to facilitate any land-use planning project in Africa.

In Southeast Asia, after land-use planning practitioners benefited from training on the use of the Facility’s Land-use Planner, they developed concrete case studies, demonstrating the potential of the tool in their day-to-day context. The Land-use Planner, now also available in Vietnamese, is used by local facilitators in Vietnam to assist in implementing an inclusive land-use planning approach in the Central Highlands supported under the EU-funded programme on Integrated Landscape Management, implemented by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). In the context of the Facility-supported jurisdictional approach in Banyuasin (South Sumatra, Indonesia), preliminary work was carried out for the piloting of the Land-use Planner to support communities and smallholders transitioning towards agroforestry practices.

Q-Huong Le, MDRI, 2022

Participants engaging in the Land-use Planner training course

Fostering supply chain transparency to value partner countries’ efforts in transitioning to legal, deforestation-free and sustainable land-use and commodity production

The upcoming EU regulation on deforestation-free products and emerging partnership approaches with commodity-producing countries have further increased the relevance of the EU REDD Facility’s transparency work to promote legal, deforestation-free and sustainable commodity production. In 2022, the Facility’s Transparency Pathway helped structure engagement on supply chain transparency with Côte d’Ivoire, Vietnam, the Republic of the Congo, Colombia and Ecuador. In Côte d’Ivoire, work focused on the creation of a beta platform monitoring jurisdictional sustainability, building on the Facility’s previous experience with Terpercaya in Indonesia. This flexible beta version can accommodate feedback from the Planning Ministry and other stakeholders’ ongoing discussions in Côte d’Ivoire. It can also be adapted to other country contexts, such as in Vietnam’s Central Highlands, where Facility approaches are being implemented to support provincial government’s efforts to promote legal, sustainable and deforestation-free coffee production.

These tools and related multistakeholder approaches allow partner country authorities to monitor policy implementation and inform risk assessment by market operators. The Terpercaya approach was also piloted in the Republic of the Congo, with a workshop in March 2022 launching the work for three jurisdictions at departmental level to monitor the sustainability of palm oil production and development. However, the implementation was discontinued due to the sunsetting of the Facility at the end of 2023. In Colombia and Ecuador, our support aimed to assist the development and implementation of information systems on the sustainability of the countries’ cocoa supply chains, in light of the upcoming EU regulation on deforestation-free products.

In Indonesia, we initiated the design, facilitation and implementation of a jurisdictional approach to sustainable palm oil with the district government in Banyuasin, South Sumatra, and WRI. The entry point is the inclusive and transparent development of a subnational action plan and a related integrated monitoring framework to track the district’s progress towards sustainablity. Innovative sustainability approaches developed by the Facility and WRI Indonesia are being piloted. They aim to build a shared vision and plan among stakeholders, develop an integrated monitoring framework to incentivise implementation of the action plan, and generate lessons to inform future partnership approaches in Indonesia and beyond.

Providing technical support to the European Commission, we participated in the EU- Brazil Beef and Leather Value Chain Dialogues, highlighting possible traceability solutions, and developed preparedness checks for the cocoa and timber sectors in Ecuador and DRC respectively. Beyond the EU, we also provided inputs to the working group of the OECD FAO Practical Business Tool on Deforestation, Forest Degradation and Due Diligence in Agricultural Supply Chains. Our long-term partnership with Trase informed contributions to these processes and underpinned a series of Transparency Pathway Insights, including on the assessment of the legality of deforestation using spatial data.

GTC plantations in savannah areas. Pool department, Republic of the Congo

GTC

GTC plantations in savannah areas. Pool deparment, Republic of the Congo

Supporting stakeholder participation and government engagement in forest and land-use governance dialogues and climate policy implementation

With important forest policy and law reforms underway in DRC, we supported the drafting of a civil society participation guide. Our support has helped the civil society platform GTCRR to be more proactive and position itself as a credible government counterpart. The platform is now replicating this reference guide in other policy reform processes and geographies, including to ensure wider civil society engagement in the second letter of intent of CAFI. We also mapped and analysed the legal framework on stakeholder participation in REDD+ to improve civil society engagement in deliberative processes, including the upcoming forest policy reform.

With over half of Colombia’s forest cover under collective land regime, community forestry is an important component of the national strategy to control deforestation. With ONF Andina, we filled major technical and legal gaps and helped stakeholders’ outreach to the new government by supporting the National Roundtable on community forestry.

In Indonesia, results from Facility-supported legality-related assessments of forest conversion legality indicators, potential impacts of the Job Creation Law on forest and land- use governance, and forest restoration and rehabilitation, have provided some insights and recommendations for key governmental policy makers in the forest and land-use sector and for civil society organisations in the development of advocacy strategies.

Building on its experience in analysing legal frameworks governing forest conversion in Asia and Central Africa, we supported the development of a knowledge base on the status of forest governance, law enforcement and legal compliance through data collection in Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, DRC, the Republic of the Congo, Laos and Indonesia, using an EFI-tested methodology. This methodology was originally developed to monitor governance related to the production forest sector. We expanded its scope to all forest types and forest-related policy processes. The knowledge base will provide information to a broad range of partner country stakeholders facilitating their participation in forest and land-use governance policy processes and legal/sustainable supply chain initiatives.

National Technical Roundtable on Community Forestry

Currently, the EU REDD Facility is supporting the Government and the National Technical Roundtable on Community Forestry with the generation of information related to strategic issues for the sector.

Promoting deforestation-free private investments in the land-use sector

We collaborated with governments and their technical partners in Colombia, Ecuador and Vietnam to demonstrate the feasibility of private finance mapping in the land- use sector to inform policy making, develop financial strategies, and stimulate investment in forest conservation and sustainable commodity production. In Ecuador, we started supporting the Ministry of Environment in mapping 2019–2021 private flows in agriculture and forestry to build a knowledge base and facilitate cross-ministerial coordination on financial strategies to tackle deforestation. In Colombia, we prepared for finance data collection that started late 2022. This data will help determine what financial mechanism should be developed to foster public-private partnerships and incentivise private investments in two priority landscapes of the national conservation programme Herencia Colombia – also supported by the EU. In Vietnam, we prepared the mapping of public and private investments in the Central Highlands under the EU-funded UNDP programme on Integrated Land-use Management. We drafted an implementation plan to collect and analyse the data for land-use finance mapping.

We are also providing technical backstopping to various countries currently mapping land-use finance. DRC, through the national REDD Fund, uses the Facility’s Land-use Finance Tool to align domestic and international public investments to the REDD+ National Strategy and the second CAFI Letter of Intent. Following difficulties to engage national partners during the COVID pandemic and to obtain financial information from donors, the work resumed in 2022 and is expected to deliver insights during 2023.

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About the EU REDD Facility

The EU REDD Facility supports countries in improving land-use governance as part of their efforts to slow, halt and reverse deforestation. It also supports the overall EU effort to reduce its contribution to deforestation in developing countries. The Facility focuses on countries that are engaged in REDD+, an international mechanism that incentivises developing countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from their forest and land-use sectors. The Facility is hosted by the European Forest Institute and was established in 2010.

Disclaimer

This website has been produced with the assistance of the European Union and the Governments Germany, Ireland and the Netherlands. The contents of this site are the sole responsibility of the European Forest Institute’s EU REDD Facility and can under no circumstances be regarded as reflecting the position of funding organisations.