Season’s greetings and 2021 in review

As 2021 draws to a close, I’d like to take this opportunity to share some highlights from this year’s work by the EU REDD Facility. 

This year we celebrated the 10th anniversary of our founding, taking the opportunity to reflect on the lessons we learned over the last decade. We’re working to ensure these insights help to shape and accelerate action for protecting and restoring the world’s forests.  

Taking stock of progress towards addressing deforestation 

The Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forest and Land Use, drafted as part of the UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) process, is a significant achievement. The Declaration brings more than 130 countries to work collectively to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030.  

We’re collaborating with partner countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America to understand the governance challenges driving deforestation, track private finance for tropical forests, and develop pragmatic approaches that monitor and deliver change for forest and land-use sector governance. 

Assessing the revised climate plans of several of our partner countries, we’ve seen many opportunities to work in partnership to address forest land-use sector challenges. But we’ve also found a mixed picture in terms of overall pledges to reduce emissions, and forest-related targets.  

A new pathway to decoupling deforestation and trade  

In launching our Transparency Pathway, we offer a pragmatic method for turning policy aspirations into measures to decouple deforestation and trade. Our first Transparency Pathway insight demonstrated how supply chain data can be used to develop new understandings of commodity trade contexts. This information unlocks potential for partnerships between producers, consumers, and trader groups to shift commodity markets towards sustainability. Building on our partnership with the Trase Initiative and the support we provided to our Indonesian partners tracking jurisdictional sustainability, we found growing interest from our partner countries in supply chain transparency approaches. 

Land-use planning processes get easier with an updated website and training 

This year we gave our flagship Land-use Planner a major overhaul. Partners in Africa, Asia and Latin America used the tool to help develop land-use scenarios, compare social, economic and environmental impacts, and weigh policy decisions. The tool is now available in 6 languages and more than 100 participants have been trained throughout the year, now taking the tool forward in their own programmes and land-use planning activities across the globe.   

Towards 2022 

In 2022, we look forward to: 

• Consolidating the work on inclusive land-use planning at local level in Central and West Africa 
• Strengthening our tools with new modules and data, such as spatial applications for the Land-use Planner and private finance mapping guidelines for the Land-use Finance Tool, and developing a knowledge base on forest and land-use governance in our partner countries 

• Continuing to work with country partners to increase transparency in palm oil, cocoa and coffee supply chains in light of emerging market requirements for promoting legal and deforestation-free trade  
• Providing support to jurisdictional approaches to promote sustainable land use and inform public and private sector dialogues and policy development in Côte d’Ivoire, Republic of the Congo, Indonesia and Vietnam.  

If you’d like to know more about any aspect of our work, subscribe to the EU REDD Facility newsletter.