Editing IPCC:AR6/WGIII/Chapter-14 (section)

==== 14.5.2.1 Forestry, Land Use and REDD+ ====

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Since 2008, several, often overlapping, voluntary and non-binding international efforts and agreements have been adopted to reduce net emissions from the forestry sector. These initiatives have varying levels of private sector involvement and different objectives, targets, and timelines. Some efforts focus on reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation, while other focus on the enhancement of sinks through restoration of cleared or degraded landscapes. These initiatives do not elaborate specific policies, procedures, or implementation mechanisms. They set targets, frameworks, and milestones, aiming to catalyse further action, investment, and transparency in conservation and consolidate individual country efforts.

After the UN-sponsored Tropical Forestry Action Plan ( [[#Winterbottom--1990|Winterbottom 1990]] ; [[#Seymour--2016|Seymour and Busch 2016]] ), among the longest standing programmes in the forestry sector are the World Bank-sponsored Forest Carbon Partnership Facility in 2007, which helps facilitate funding for REDD+ readiness and specific projects, in addition to preparing countries for results-based payments and future carbon markets while securing local communities’ benefits managed sub-nationally, and the UN REDD+ Programme initiated in 2008, which aims to reduce forest emissions and enhance carbon stocks in forests while contributing to national sustainable development in developing countries, after the 2007 COP13 in Bali formally adopted REDD+ in the UNFCCC decisions and incorporated it in the Bali Plan of Action. As discussed above, Article 5 of the Paris Agreement encourages Parties to take action to implement and support REDD+. These efforts tend to focus on reducing emissions through the creation of protected areas, payments for ecosystem services, and/or land tenure reform ( [[#Pirard--2019|Pirard et al. 2019]] ). The UNREDD+ programme supports national REDD+ efforts, inclusion of stakeholders in relevant dialogues, and capacity building toward REDD+ readiness in partner countries. To date the conservation and emissions impacts of REDD+ remain misunderstood ( [[#Pirard--2019|Pirard et al. 2019]] ), but while existing evidence suggests that reductions in deforestation from sub-national REDD+ initiatives have been limited ( [[#Bos--2017|Bos et al. 2017]] ) it shows an increasing prominence ( [[#Maguire--2021|Maguire et al. 2021]] ). Additionally, the Green Climate Fund has carried out results-based payments within REDD+. Eight countries have so far received significant funding ( [[#GCF--2021|GCF 2021]] ). The shift in the REDD+ focus from ecosystem service payment to domestic policy realignments and incentive structure has changed the way REDD+ was developed and implemented (Brockhaus et al. 2017). Large-scale market resources have not fully materialised as a global carbon market system that explicitly integrates REDD+ remains under development ( [[#Angelsen--2017|Angelsen 2017]] ). Public funding for REDD+ is also limited ( [[#Climate%20Focus--2017|Climate Focus 2017]] ). Leading up to the adoption of the Paris Agreement, the governments of Germany, Norway, and the United Kingdom formed a partnership in 2014 called ‘GNU’ to support results-based financing for REDD+, with Norway emerging as one of, if not the single largest, major donor for REDD+ through its pledge in 2007 of approximately USD3 billion annually. Norway pledged USD1 billion for Brazil in 2008 and the same for Indonesia in 2010 ( [[#Schroeder--2020|Schroeder et al. 2020]] ). Meanwhile, REDD+ Early Movers was established with support from Germany, and the Central African Forest Initiative, a collaborative partnership between the European Union, Germany, Norway, France, and the United Kingdom was also set up. It supports six central African countries in fighting deforestation.

More recently, the Lowering Emissions by Accelerating Forest Finance (LEAF) Coalition was established, consisting of the governments of Norway, the UK, and the USA and initially nine companies, to accelerate REDD+ with a jurisdictional approach. LEAF uses the Architecture for REDD+ Transactions (ART)’s The REDD+ Environmental Excellence Standard (TREES), coordinated by Emergent, a non-profit intermediary between tropical countries and the private sector. Three jurisdictions in Brazil and two countries have already submitted concept notes to ART to receive results-based payments. REDD+ initiatives with a jurisdictional approach have also been adopted in various markets, such as the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA) (Maguire 2021). In addition to Brazil, Indonesia has attracted significant interest as a host country for REDD+. Indonesia ranks second, after Brazil, as the largest producer of deforestation-related GHG emissions ( [[#Zarin--2016|Zarin et al. 2016]] ), but it has committed to a large reduction of deforestation in its NDC ( [[#Government%20of%20Indonesia--2016|Government of Indonesia 2016]] ). Australia has collaborated on scientific research and emissions reduction monitoring ( [[#Tacconi--2017|Tacconi 2017]] ). It took a while, however, before emissions reductions were witnessed ( [[#Meehan--2019|Meehan et al. 2019]] ). The expansion of commodity plantations, however, conflict with reduction ambitions ( [[#Anderson--2016|Anderson et al. 2016]] ; [[#Irawan--2019|Irawan et al. 2019]] ) In addition to implementation at the site and jurisdictional levels, legal enforcement ( [[#Tacconi--2019|Tacconi et al. 2019]] ) as well as policy and regulatory reforms ( [[#Ekawati--2019|Ekawati et al. 2019]] ) appear to be needed.

Another relevant initiative is one under the 2015 United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), which targets land degradation neutrality, that is, ‘a ''state whereby the amount and quality of land resources, necessary to support ecosystem functions and services and enhance food security, remains stable or increases within specified temporal and spatial scales and ecosystems’'' ( [[#Orr--2017|Orr et al. 2017]] ). This overarching goal was recognised as also being critical to reaching the more specific avoided deforestation and degradation and restoration goals of the UNFCCC and UNCBD. The Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) initiative from UNCCD includes target-setting programmes that assist countries by providing practical tools and guidance for the establishment of the voluntary targets and to formulate associated measures to achieve LDN and accelerate implementation of projects ( [[#Chasek--2019|Chasek et al. 2019]] ). Today, 124 countries have committed to their LDN national targets ( [[#UNCCD--2015|UNCCD 2015]] ). The LDN Fund is an investment vehicle launched in UNCCD COP 13 in 2017, which exists to provide long-term financing for private projects and programmes for countries to achieve their LDN targets. According to the UNCCD, most of the funds will be invested in developing countries.

Recent efforts towards the enhancement of sinks from the forestry sector have the overarching goal of reaching zero ''gross'' deforestation globally, that is, eliminating the clearing of all natural forests. The New York Declaration on Forests (NYDF) was the first international pledge to call for a halving of natural forest loss by 2020 and the complete elimination of natural forest loss by 2030 ( [[#Climate%20Focus--2016|Climate Focus 2016]] ). It was endorsed at the United Nations Climate Summit in September 2014. By September 2019 the list of NYDF supporters included over 200 actors: national governments, sub-national governments, multi-national companies, groups representing indigenous communities, and non-government organisations. These endorsers committed to doing their part to achieve the NYDF’s ten goals, which included ending deforestation for agricultural expansion by 2020, reducing deforestation from other sectors, restoring forests, and providing financing for forest action ( [[#Forest%20Declaration--2019|Forest Declaration 2019]] ). These goals are assessed and tracked through the NYDF Progress Assessment, which includes NYDF Assessment Partners that collect data, generate analysis, and release the finding based on the NYDF framework and goals.

The effectiveness of these agreements, which lack binding rules, can only be judged by the supplementary actions they have catalysed. The NYDF contributed to the development of several other zero-deforestation pledges, including the Amsterdam Declarations by seven European nations to achieve fully sustainable and deforestation-free agro-commodity supply chains in Europe by 2020 and over 150 individual company commitments to not source products associated with deforestation ( [[#Donofrio--2017|Donofrio et al. 2017]] ; [[#Lambin--2018|Lambin et al. 2018]] ). Recent studies indicate that these efforts currently lack the potential to achieve wide-scale reductions in clearing and associated emissions due to weak implementation ( [[#Garrett--2019|Garrett et al. 2019]] ), although in some cases in Indonesia and elsewhere the commodity supply chain sustainability drive appears to contribute to lowering deforestation ( [[#Wijaya--2019|Wijaya et al. 2019]] ; [[#Chain%20Reaction%20Research--2020|Chain Reaction Research 2020]] ; [[#Schulte--2020|Schulte et al. 2020]] ). The NYDF may have triggered small additional reductions in deforestation in some areas, particularly for soy, and to a lesser extent cattle, in the Brazilian Amazon ( [[#Lambin--2018|Lambin et al. 2018]] ), but these effects were temporary, as efforts are being actively reversed and deforestation has increased again significantly. Deforestation rates have escalated in Brazil, with the rate in June 2019 (the first dry-season month in the new administration) up 88% over the 2018 rate in the same month ( [[#INPE--2019|INPE 2019]] ). [[#Curtis--2018|Curtis et al. (2018)]] find global targets are clearly not being met. More recent increase in the deforestation rate remains to be assessed. NYDF confirms that the initiative did not reach its zero-deforestation goal ( [[#NYDF%20Assessment%20Partners--2020|NYDF Assessment Partners 2020]] ).

In 2010, the Parties to the CBD adopted the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011–2020 which included 20 targets known as the Aichi Biodiversity targets ( [[#Marques--2014|Marques et al. 2014]] ). Of relevance to the forestry sector, Aichi Target 15 sets the goal of enhancing ecosystem resilience and the contribution of biodiversity to carbon stocks though conservation and restoration, including ‘restoration of at least 15% of degraded ecosystems’ ( [[#UNCBD--2010|UNCBD 2010]] ). The plan elaborates milestones, including the development of national plans for potential restoration levels and contributions to biodiversity protection, carbon sequestration, and climate adaptation to be integrated into other national strategies, including REDD+. In 2020, however, the CBD found that while progress was evident for the majority of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets, it was not sufficient for the achievement of the targets by 2020 ( [[#CBD--2020|CBD 2020]] ).

Recent efforts toward negative emissions through restoration include the Bonn Challenge, the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100) and Initiative 20x20. The Bonn Challenge, initiated in 2011 by the Government of Germany and the International Union for Conservation of Nature, is intended to catalyse the existing international AFOLU commitments. It aimed to bring 150 million hectares (Mha) of the world’s deforested and degraded land into restoration by 2020, and 350 Mha by 2030. AFR has the goal of restoring 100 Mha specifically in Africa ( [[#AUDA-NEPAD--2019|AUDA-NEPAD 2019]] ), while 20x20 aims to restore 20 Mha in Latin America and the Caribbean ( [[#Anderson--2019|Anderson and Peimbert 2019]] ). Increasing commitments for restoration have created momentum for restoration interventions ( [[#Chazdon--2017|Chazdon et al. 2017]] ; [[#Mansourian--2017|Mansourian et al. 2017]] ; [[#Djenontin--2018|Djenontin et al. 2018]] ). To date 97 Mha has been pledged in NDCs. Yet only a small part of this goal has been achieved. The Bonn Challenge Barometer – a progress-tracking framework and tool to support pledgers – indicates that 27 Mha ( [[#InfoFLR--2018|InfoFLR 2018]] ) are currently being restored, equivalent to 1.379 GtCO 2 -eq sequestered ( [[#Dave--2019|Dave et al. 2019]] ). A key challenge in scaling up restoration has been to mobilise sufficient financing ( [[#Liagre--2015|Liagre et al. 2015]] ; [[#Djenontin--2018|Djenontin et al. 2018]] ). This underscores the importance of building international financing for restoration (equivalent to the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility focused on avoided deforestation and degradation).

In sum, existing international agreements have had a small impact on reducing emissions from the AFOLU sector and some success in achieving the enhancement of sinks through restoration. However, these outcomes are nowhere near levels required to meet the Paris Agreement temperature goal – which would require turning land use and forests globally from a net anthropogenic source during 1990–2010 to a net sink of carbon by 2030, and providing a quarter of emissions reductions planned by countries ( [[#Grassi--2017|Grassi et al. 2017]] ). The AFOLU sector has so far contributed only modestly to net mitigation (Chapter 7).

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