Our Work on Climate Change

RECOFTC works on a variety of climate change projects, helping local people in Asia and the Pacific play an active role in mitigation efforts and helping them adapt to climate change effects.

Approaches

RECOFTC works for People, Forests, and Climate Change by:

Identifying and analyzing opportunities, constraints, and risks: We offer reliable, balanced, and informative resources on climate change, especially relating to REDD+ and local people.
Updating and training key actors: We help governments, indigenous people and local communities, practitioners, and investors to develop the knowledge and skills needed to make well-informed and appropriate decisions.
Advocating for local people’s interests: At the very minimum, climate change responses should do no harm to local people. Ideally, they should enhance their livelihoods. Using strategic communications, we help to ensure that the voice of local people is heard and acted upon.
Developing best practices: We test and enhance tools, methods, and approaches for effectively and fairly engaging local people in climate change initiatives.
Providing advice and technical support: We work with partners throughout the region to ensure that the lessons of community forestry are applied in REDD+ and other climate-related forestry projects.

Projects and Activities

The Grassroots Equity and Enhanced Networks in the Mekong (GREEN Mekong) Program is a three year, US$ 2 million program engaging policy makers, civil society organizations and grassroots stakeholders in capacity building focused on equity in forest-based climate change mitigation.
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Grassroots Capacity Building for REDD aims to build local forest stakeholder capacity to effectively engage in REDD+ planning and implementation through subnational and national training. This four-year project is supported by Norad and is active in Indonesia, Lao PDR, Nepal, and Vietnam.
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REDD-Net is a network working with southern civil society to champion the interests of the poor in REDD+. Through the analysis of key issues and the development of tools to shape REDD+ policies and projects, it supports national-level climate change networks around the world. RECOFTC is the Asia-Pacific coordinator for this Overseas Development Institute–led global effort.
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REDD Learning Network shares the latest REDD+ knowledge, best practices, and critical issues with a select group of government officials and other influencers from eight Asia-Pacific countries. It aims to help ensure that the potential benefits for improved forest management are realized as rapidly as possible. The network is part of the USAID-funded Responsible Asia Forest and Trade (RAFT) initiative and is led by The Nature Conservancy.
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First Regional Forum: Community Forestry and Carbon Financing was held in August 2009 to share knowledge on the opportunities, risks, and constraints forest carbon financing presents to local people. Following this major event, a call for action and brief on the importance of local people in REDD+ were shared widely, including at a RECOFTC press conference held during the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) talks in Bangkok.

Advisory services are available upon request. During 2010, RECOFTC helped UN-REDD develop benefit-sharing mechanisms that were REDD+ compliant and helped with the verification and evaluation of its Free Prior and Informed Consent Program (FPIC). With Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES) in 2009, we delivered three national workshops to bring forestry stakeholders up to speed on REDD+ issues. In collaboration with the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ), RECOFTC has developed guidelines and a training manual to shape local consultation processes for obtaining FPIC in REDD.

Other activities include strategically advocating for pro-poor REDD+ wherever we can add value. Some examples include UNFCCC submissions, the RECOFTC blog, and various briefs, which keep thousands of stakeholders in the loop on the international climate negotiations. RECOFTC is also actively involved in national REDD working groups.