Getting ready for REDD+ in Tanzania: a case study of progress and challenges

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  • Neil D. Burgess
  • Bruno Bahane
  • Tim Clairs
  • Finn Danielsen
  • Søren Dalsgaard
  • Mikkel Funder
  • Niklas Hagelberg
  • Paul Harrison
  • Christognus Haule
  • Kekilia Kabalimu
  • Felician Kilahama
  • Edward Kilawe
  • Simon L. Lewis
  • Jon C. Lovett
  • Gertrude Lyatuu
  • Andrew R. Marshall
  • Charles Meshack
  • Lera Miles
  • Simon A.H. Milledge
  • Pantaleo K.T. Munishi
  • Evarist Nashanda
  • Deo Shirima
  • Ruth D. Swetnam
  • Simon Willcock
    University of Leeds
  • Andrew Williams
  • Eliakim Zahabu
The proposed mechanism for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) offers significant potential for conserving forests to reduce negative impacts of climate change. Tanzania is one of nine pilot countries for the United Nations REDD Programme, receives significant funding from the Norwegian, Finnish and German governments and is a participant in the World Bank?s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility. In combination, these interventions aim to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, provide an income to rural communities and conserve biodiversity. The establishment of the UN-REDD Programme in Tanzania illustrates real-world challenges in a developing country. These include currently inadequate baseline forestry data sets (needed to calculate reference emission levels), inadequate government capacity and insufficient experience of implementing REDD+-type measures at operational levels. Additionally, for REDD+ to succeed, current users of forest resources must adopt new practices, including the equitable sharing of benefits that accrue from REDD+ implementation. These challenges are being addressed by combined donor support to implement a national forest inventory, remote sensing of forest cover, enhanced capacity for measuring, reporting and verification, and pilot projects to test REDD+ implementation linked to the existing Participatory Forest Management Programme. Our conclusion is that even in a country with considerable donor support, progressive forest policies, laws and regulations, an extensive network of managed forests and increasingly developed locally-based forest management approaches, implementing REDD+ presents many challenges. These are being met by coordinated, genuine partnerships between government, non-government and community-based agencies
Original languageUnknown
Pages (from-to)339-351
Number of pages13
JournalOryx
Volume44
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jul 2010
Externally publishedYes
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