Welcoming remarks

Honorable ministers and ambassadors; dear visitors and colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, 

On behalf of Norad and the Norwegian International Climate and Forest Initiative, I am very proud to welcome you all to Oslo, to the second Oslo REDD Exchange. It is indeed a pleasure to address this unique group of experts on every aspect of REDD+.

• Watch it: All sessions will be  streamed live and are available for watching on-demand  and added as the conference progresses.  

We have in this room almost 500 women and men from around 60 countries from all corners of the world. We have representatives from civil society, governments, research institutions, multilateral institutions and the private sector – in short: The global REDD+ community. This conference is a result of close collaboration between Norad and the Climate and Forest Initiative in the Ministry of environment, as well as collaboration with many of our partners from all around the world. We are also proud to present some of the results of the good work done by our civil society partners – this will be displayed in the results bar in the lobby for the duration of the conference.

Norway is proud to be one of the key global players in the promotion of REDD+. This is a mechanism that we think will help reduce the level of emissions from the deforestation and forest degradation. This again is one of the prerequisites for global success in limiting climate change. Since its introduction, REDD+ has gained significant influence and impact. We have seen important political decisions in many partner countries aimed at reducing deforestation, for example the moratorium on new concessions in Indonesia. We have also seen important decisions recognizing the role of customary tenure in many countries.

The basic idea of REDD+ is easy: to pay countries who succeed in improving their forest cover and thereby enhancing the carbon stock. However, there are many issues to be solved before this can be put into practice as a global mechanism. There is still no global agreement on the details of how REDD will work. The level of funding and the sources of funding are still being debated. There is also an ongoing discussion on benefit sharing mechanisms - who will benefit from the REDD payments? There is a continuous debate on the importance of user rights and tenure and the role of private sector in REDD+ is increasingly being recognized.

There are knowledge gaps on what policies are needed to change the trend of deforestation.

Norway is funding a lot of research on REDD, and we are also undertaking a real time evaluation of the climate and forest initiative. Some of the findings from this evaluation are related to the importance of engaging civil society and the importance of knowledge management. This conference will hopefully contribute to both of these items: civil society and knowledge institutions are important participants at this conference. The conference is indeed meant to share some of the learning that has taken place the last few years, and to help shape the way forward.

We think the conference will harness the understanding that without close collaboration with people who live in and near the forests, there will be no success in REDD+. We also hope that the conference will enhance the understanding that success in REDD+ goes hand in hand with sustainable development and poverty reduction. Success in reducing deforestation also depends on coordination between the forest sector and other sectors like for example agriculture, energy, mining and land policies.

We hope this conference will be an inspiration to all of the participants, and that each one of you will gain new knowledge, new friends and new ideas on things you want to implement in your respective country or organisation.

We hope you will enjoy Oslo, and we are very happy to see that so many have registered to come, even though this is a dark and cold season in our part of the world. With these few words, I want to wish you good luck the next couple of days, and I look forward to interacting with many of you during the course of the event.

We are grateful to Frances Seymour who has chaired the programme committee for this conference in her eminent manner. She has for a long time been a leading figure in the global REDD+ discussions, not least during her long period as a director for the Centre for International Forest Research. I will now leave the chair for the conference in her very capable hands.

Thank you.