The EU REDD Facility works with partners in Africa, Asia and Latin America to understand the governance challenges driving deforestation and develop pragmatic approaches to advance land-use governance and sustainable development. This report presents highlights from our work in 2021.
The EU REDD Facility has published its annual report for 2020, with highlights and insights into work achieved over the year.
In 2020, COVID-19 brought unprecedented challenges for the world’s forests and the people depending on them. While some forest and agricultural sector operators and producers prioritised economic survival over environmental standards, the Facility’s partners remained committed to improving land-use governance as part of efforts to slow, halt and reverse deforestation.
The EU REDD Facility annual report highlights growing interest in supply chain transparency approaches in response to evolving market requirements. Building on progress made in tracking jurisdictional sustainability of Indonesian palm oil, the Facility worked with public and private sector stakeholders to assess feasibility of transparency approaches for cocoa sectors in Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Colombia and Ecuador.
The Facility’s Land-use Planner was increasingly used in 2020 by partner countries to support decision-making. An updated version of the tool brought together a wider set of information to the community of users, including land-use data, methods and case studies.
In Colombia and Indonesia, the Facility worked on community forestry as path to improving livelihoods and achieving climate commitments.
As a means of deforestation-proofing investments to leverage finance to meet climate and forest goals, the Facility continued roll out of its Land-use Finance Tool. In 2020 Cambodia used the tool to help to build the case for more international support and improve spending coherence. The Democratic Republic of the Congo also started to use the tool to track all public land-use spending since 2009.
In assessments of payment for environmental services models for progress towards sustainably produced cocoa, the Facility confirmed the importance of incentive mechanisms for covering initial investment costs of shifting to sustainable production.
This year, COVID-19 brought unprecedented challenges for the world’s forests and the people depending on them. The pandemic has had serious social, economic and environmental consequences in our partner countries. Forest-risk commodity exports decreased dramatically, jeopardising financial security in agricultural sectors. At the same time, operators and producers prioritised tactics for their economic survival over environmental standards.
A key contributor to climate change, species loss, and threat to the livelihoods of the 1.6 billion people who depend on forests for food and livelihoods: deforestation ranks among the great challenges of this century.
Since our inception in 2010, the EU REDD Facility has learnt that combining climate, aid and trade-related interventions has great potential to address drivers of deforestation. We’ve also found that protecting forests and incentivising sustainable land use are only possible if governments, private sectors, and civil societies of tropical forest regions partner to generate change.
As a Facility, we’re focused on finding opportunities for contributing to progress in climate change mitigation and sustainable land use and supply chains. There’s good momentum for us to build on.
Countries are starting to act on their commitments under the Paris Agreement on climate change. More companies are committing to eliminating deforestation from supply chains. And the EU has set out a new plan to protect and restore the world’s forests and is exploring options to strengthen implementation of its action plan on illegal logging.
I’m pleased to introduce this new EU REDD Facility blog, where our experts will share their thoughts about and experiences with working with our partners in tropical forest countries in Africa, Asia and South America on:
This will be a space for free thought, where we’ll push the boundaries of our institutional agenda. But always within sight will be our mission to support tropical forest countries find innovative approaches and solutions to their land-use governance and sustainable development goals.
In all of our work and through the tools and approaches we develop, we promote dialogue among people with varied interests in forests – from policy-makers and business leaders to civil society and community representatives. This blog will complement and further that ongoing discourse. We hope it will also bring additional knowledge and understanding to policy-makers in Europe as they move ahead with new policies to promote sustainable land use and investment.
The challenges ahead can sometimes seem insurmountable. But with joint, creative action, we can affect real and lasting change. We look forward to sharing our ideas and collaborating with you to find creative solutions to the complex 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 densely forested northern Likouala Department of the Republic of the Congo lies deep in the Congo Basin. Here, residents from a local community were happy one year because favourable agricultural conditions had produced tonnes of surplus corn. Villagers were keen to get the produce to market, but there was one major obstacle. They didn’t have a truck for transporting the corn from their village to the market.
