South-South workshops contribute to experience sharing and dialogue on REDD+
This joint workshop was convened as a way of creating efficiencies between the World Bank/UN-REDD’s existing South-South Knowledge Exchange and the TNC facilitated Multi-Country Dialogue on REDD+ Finance and Benefits Sharing. With a similar agenda of topics and participants, the two processes were brought together on the margins of the Norad REDD Exchange in Oslo for a full day workshop on October 28th, 2013.
Several countries have opted for the establishment of REDD+ funds as a funding modality to channel
different sources of funding towards the implementation of REDD+ activities. They are at different levels of development and there are lessons learnt in each of these countries that could be shared with other countries and used in the fund design process. The objective of this workshop was to facilitate dialogues and share experiences on topics relevant to fund design based on actual activities underway, as opposed to “generic best practices”.
The workshop brought together representatives from Colombia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Peru, Mexico, Ecuador, and Costa Rica. The morning of the workshop was dedicated to how countries have aligned their disbursement modalities with strategic objectives defined in their REDD+ strategies or other similar documents. The second part of the workshop dealt with modes of delivery. More particularly, different funding modalities were presented. First current Payments for Ecosystem Services and how they are being adapted for REDD+ were shown from Vietnam, Mexico and Costa Rica. Then Brazil presented the Amazon Fund’s modes of delivery and current portfolio.
In order to facilitate an ongoing exchange of information, each participant was asked to catalogue specific areas from other countries may be applicable to their own development of a funding mechanism of REDD+. This is clearly a dynamic conversation with the potential to shape significantly how efficiently countries can engage to deliver successful REDD+ programs. The next workshop in the series is scheduled tentatively for early summer 2014.