TY - JOUR
T1 - REDD+ initiatives for safeguarding biodiversity and ecosystem services
T2 - harmonizing sets of standards for national application
AU - Ehara, Makoto
AU - Hyakumura, Kimihiko
AU - Yokota, Yasuhiro
N1 - Funding Information:
The Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF), established by the World Bank, is supported mainly by donors from developed countries. Developing countries financed by the FCPF and Delivering Partners (for example the UNDP and the Inter-American Development Bank) must use an environmental assessment instrument named the ‘‘Strategic Environmental and Social Assessment (SESA)’’ to assess national REDD? strategy development and related readiness activities to address the main environmental and social issues identified by key stakeholders. Under SESA, countries have to develop an environmental and social management framework (ESMF) to ensure that developing countries address environmental and social risks and potential negative and positive impacts identified by SESA (FCPF 2012).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2013, The Japanese Forest Society and Springer Japan.
PY - 2014/10/1
Y1 - 2014/10/1
N2 - In the context of growing concerns about environmental aspects of reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries (acronym REDD+), we conducted a comparative analysis of three sets of globally-applicable standards and one instrument of REDD+ initiatives for safeguarding biodiversity and ecosystem services: (1) social and environmental principles and criteria, (2) REDD+ social and environmental standards, (3) climate, community, and biodiversity project design standards, and (4) strategic environmental and social assessment. We found that their projected proximal outcomes for biodiversity and ecosystem service treatments, and approaches to achieve them, are not uniform (e.g., differences in spatial coverage for expecting positive impacts, prioritized REDD+ activities, and expected level of rigor in biodiversity and ecosystem service monitoring). We also found that all four include identification of the priority areas for biodiversity and ecosystem services, plus monitoring and mitigation of the negative impacts of REDD+ activities. These all require substantial time and resources to fully address what the three standards and the instrument actually stipulate. We thus propose options for harmonizing their use to facilitate scaling-up of efforts to strengthen safeguards, from the project level to the national level, while respecting individual national contexts and taking advantage of each standard’s characteristics.
AB - In the context of growing concerns about environmental aspects of reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries (acronym REDD+), we conducted a comparative analysis of three sets of globally-applicable standards and one instrument of REDD+ initiatives for safeguarding biodiversity and ecosystem services: (1) social and environmental principles and criteria, (2) REDD+ social and environmental standards, (3) climate, community, and biodiversity project design standards, and (4) strategic environmental and social assessment. We found that their projected proximal outcomes for biodiversity and ecosystem service treatments, and approaches to achieve them, are not uniform (e.g., differences in spatial coverage for expecting positive impacts, prioritized REDD+ activities, and expected level of rigor in biodiversity and ecosystem service monitoring). We also found that all four include identification of the priority areas for biodiversity and ecosystem services, plus monitoring and mitigation of the negative impacts of REDD+ activities. These all require substantial time and resources to fully address what the three standards and the instrument actually stipulate. We thus propose options for harmonizing their use to facilitate scaling-up of efforts to strengthen safeguards, from the project level to the national level, while respecting individual national contexts and taking advantage of each standard’s characteristics.
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U2 - 10.1007/s10310-013-0429-7
DO - 10.1007/s10310-013-0429-7
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84910114692
VL - 19
SP - 427
EP - 436
JO - Journal of Forest Research
JF - Journal of Forest Research
SN - 1341-6979
IS - 5
ER -