Complex but Crucial: The Private Sector and Jurisdictional REDD+

Natural climate solutions – including the protection and restoration of forests -are now universally recognized as an integral part of the solution to global warming. Equally accepted is that the delivery of these critical natural climate solutions requires effort and ambition on scales not yet realized in the forestry sector. Countries must not only meet their forest-related greenhouse gas goals but surpass them and continue to set new, ever more ambitious targets. The Green Gigaton Challenge suggests targeting at least one million jurisdictional REDD+ emission reductions per year by 2025

A key factor in achieving sustainable, significant emission reductions is a well-planned and comprehensive Government-led REDD+ strategy. Such strategies encompass the participation of a range of stakeholders, including the private sector.

I am delighted to have co-authored a paper on options for private sector involvement under ART (the Architecture for REDD+ Transactions). The paper offers options for the roles that the private sector can play in supporting government objectives in the forest sector and lays out 7 different models for collaboration. The range of private sector involvement in REDD+ programs is generally not well understood with a typical binary focus either on the great benefits or the catastrophic risks of private sector participation in REDD+. With this paper we hope to provide nuance and to contribute to put such unproductive binary discussions to rest.

In December 2021, we presented the paper in an ART-hosted webinar: a recording is available here.