Overseas Development Institute report examining the REDD+ commitments of the five largest donors to Fast Start Finance.
Since 2007, developed countries have provided substantial international public finance for programs that will reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD+). This paper seeks to understand the role of REDD+ during the Fast Start Finance (FSF) period, by reviewing the motivations and objectives for the five largest contributors to FSF: Germany, Japan, Norway, the UK, and the US. Together these five countries delivered 84 per cent of FSF, and 83 per cent of total REDD+ finance between 2010 and 2012.
Detailed data on over 4000 individual projects supported during the FSF period was compiled, seeking to maximise comparability in a difficult context of inconsistent and incomplete reporting. The top two recipients of funding are Brazil and Indonesia, at $512 million and $168 million respectively, the former consisting of the Amazon Fund to which Norway contributed over $400 million, and to which other countries in the region may be eligible for. Examples of REDD+ programmes funded by each of the five donor countries during FSF are presented, before the objectives of bilateral REDD+ contributions, and the modalities of bilateral REDD+ finance are both discussed.
REDD+ finance only contributed around 10% of FSF as a whole, although some countries such as Norway (nearly 50 per cent of its FSF) made far higher commitments. By comparison, Japan’s use of just 2 per cent for REDD+ substantially lowered the average given their being the largest single contributor to FSF.
Other key findings of the report which are highlighted are that:
The majority of REDD+ FSF was programmed bilaterally, primarily as grants.
The delivery of REDD+ finance reflects multiple contributor country objectives, including poverty reduction and biodiversity protection.
Major contributions have targeted heavily forested countries, although emissions from deforestation and the allocation of finances are not closely linked overall.
The report concludes that the outlook for REDD+ finance, as for climate finance as a whole, is uncertain. The authors note that 2014 will be a critical year to strengthen contributor country commitment to continued delivery of climate finance, and for REDD+ as a crucial element of global efforts to reduce emissions and achieve climate compatible development.