Editing IPCC:AR6/WGIII/Chapter-7 (section)

==== 7.6.4.2 Institutional Barriers and Opportunities ====

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'''Transparent and accountable governance.''' Good governance and accountability are crucial for implementation of forest and agriculture mitigation. Effective nature-based mitigation will require large-scale estimation, modelling, monitoring, reporting and verification of GHG inventories, mitigation actions, as well as their implications for sustainable development goals and their interactions with climate change impacts and adaptation. Efforts must be made to integrate the accounting from projects to the country level. While global datasets have emerged to measure forest loss, at least temporarily (e.g., [[#Hansen--2013|Hansen et al. 2013]] ), similar datasets do not yet exist for forest degradation and agricultural carbon stocks or fluxes. Most developing countries have insufficient capacity to address research needs, modelling, monitoring, reporting and data requirements ( [[#Ravindranath--2017|Ravindranath et al. 2017]] ), compromising transparency, accuracy, completeness, consistency and comparability.

Opportunity for political participation of local stakeholders is barrier in most places where forest ownership rights are not sufficiently documented ( [[#Essl--2018|Essl et al. 2018]] ). Since incentives for self-enforcement can have an important influence on deforestation rates ( [[#Fortmann--2017|Fortmann et al. 2017]] ), weak governance and insecure property rights are significant barriers to introduction of forest carbon offset projects in developing countries, where many of the low-cost options for such projects exist (Gren and Zeleke 2016). Governance challenges exist at all levels of government, with poor coordination, insufficient information sharing, and concerns over accountability playing a prominent role within REDD+ projects and programmes ( [[#Ravikumar--2015|Ravikumar et al. 2015]] ). In some cases, governments are increasingly centralising REDD+ governance and limiting the distribution of governance functions between state and non-state actors ( [[#Zelli--2017|Zelli et al. 2017]] ; [[#Phelps--2010|Phelps et al. 2010]] ). Overlap and duplication in Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) and REDD+ also limits governance effectiveness ( [[#Gupta--2016|Gupta et al. 2016]] ).

'''Clear land tenure and land-use rights.''' Unclear property rights and tenure insecurity undermine the incentives to improve forest and agricultural productivity, lead to food insecurity, undermine REDD+ objectives, discourage adoption of farm conservation practices, discourage tree planting and forest management, and exacerbate conflict between different land users ( [[#Antwi-Agyei--2015|Antwi-Agyei et al. 2015]] ; [[#Felker--2017|Felker et al. 2017]] ; [[#Sunderlin--2018|Sunderlin et al. 2018]] ; [[#Borras--2018|Borras and Franco 2018]] ; [[#Riggs--2018|Riggs et al. 2018]] ; [[#Kansanga--2019|Kansanga and Luginaah 2019]] ). Some positive signs exist as over 500 million hectares of forests have been converted to community management with clear property rights in the past two decades ( [[#Rights%20and%20Resources%20Initiative--2018|Rights and Resources Initiative 2018]] ), but adoption of forest and agricultural mitigation practices will be limited in large remaining areas with unclear property rights ( [[#Gupta--2016|Gupta et al. 2016]] ).

'''Lack of institutional capacity.''' Institutional complexity, or lack thereof, represents a major challenge when implementing large and complex mitigation programmes (e.g., REDD+) in agriculture, forest and other land uses ( [[#Bäckstrand--2017|Bäckstrand et al. 2017]] ). Without sufficient capacity, many synergies between agricultural and forest programs, or mitigation and adaptation opportunities, may be missed ( [[#Duguma--2014|Duguma et al. 2014]] ). Another aspect of institutional complexity is the different biophysical and socio-economic circumstances as well as the public and private financial means involved in the architecture and implementation of REDD+ and other initiatives ( [[#Zelli--2017|Zelli et al. 2017]] ).

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