Readiness and avoided deforestation policies: on the use of the REDD fund

This paper investigates links between the funding of the first phase of the REDD+ mechanism and the quantity of avoided deforestation that will happen during the following phases. The aim of the first phase (the readiness phase) is helping countries to improve their capacity to carry out national forest inventories, notably to assess land-use changes and forest carbon stocks and fluxes. The paper considers the argument that the funding of the first phase and the second avoided-deforestation phase are related: what is spent in the first phase reduces the amount of funds available afterwards. The authors also consider that a more precise measure of forest inventories is positively related to the willingness-to-accept by the South and the willingness-to-pay by the North for avoided deforestation.