REDD+ initiatives for safeguarding biodiversity and ecosystem services: harmonizing sets of standards for national application

Abstract

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.

Keywords:

• Biodiversity
• Ecosystem services
• REDD+
• Safeguard standards
• SESA

Acknowledgments

We are grateful for kind support from staff involved in the REDD Research and Development Center at the Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute. We would like to especially thank Dr Lera Miles for valuable comments and input on the manuscript.

Notes

Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10310-013-0429-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

1 CCBA members include Conservation International, CARE, Rainforest Alliance, The Nature Conservancy, Wildlife Conservation Society, BP, GFA Envest, Intel, SC Johnson, Sustainable Forestry Management Ltd., Weyerhaeuser, and advising institutions.

2 Brazil, for example, is developing its own national safeguard system without receiving direct support from these international organizations (Bonfante et al. 2010).

3 Depending on the standard, there are indicators under the criteria.

4 The SBIA Manual explains that “where biodiversity conditions are expected (a) to improve or (b) to remain the same without any intervention, the monitoring program must show that conditions after project implementation are better than (a) [they] would have been with natural improvements or (b) the original starting conditions”.

5 High conservation values (HCVs): (1) globally, regionally, or nationally significant concentrations of biodiversity values; (2) globally, regionally, or nationally significant large landscape-level areas where viable populations of most if not all naturally occurring species exist in natural patterns of distribution and abundance; (3) threatened or rare ecosystems; (4) areas that provide critical ecosystem services (e.g., hydrological services, erosion control); (5) areas that are fundamental for meeting the basic needs of local communities; and (6) areas that are critical for the traditional cultural identity of local communities. Source: http://hcvnetwork.org/.

6 http://www.un-redd.org/MultipleBenefitsPublications/tabid/5954/Default.aspx.

7 It is also worth taking the “Guidance on afforestation, reforestation and forest restoration” provided by the CBD in decision X/33, paragraph 8(p), into consideration, which provides guidance on “ways to conserve, sustainably use and restore biodiversity and ecosystem services while contributing to climate change mitigation and adaptation” (SCBD 2011b).

8 CCBS (Ver. 2) B1 (Net Positive Biodiversity Impacts) for the requirements.