Operationalizing safeguards in national REDD+ architectures remains a major challenge in most REDD+ countries, particularly in the area of benefit sharing. Effective, efficient and equitable outcomes of REDD+ require effective, efficient and equitable implementation of safeguards.

Results-based financing of REDD+ is conditional on the implementation of national Safeguard Information Systems (SIS) to address social and environmental criteria that go beyond carbon. The briefs in this packet discuss the challenges of operationalizing safeguards from various perspectives – governance, benefit sharing, tenure, gender, biodiversity, technical monitoring – and highlight opportunities and strategies for dealing with these challenges.

Key messages for the ASEAN Social Forestry Network REDD+ and social forestry programs have both benefits and costs. Understanding who is bearing the costs of these policies and programs, and ensuring fair compensation, will be important to achieving effective and equitable outcomes. Equity depends on the context and perceptions of the affected stakeholders. Including considerations of equity in the design of REDD+ and social forestry policies can positively influence the policies’ outcomes and sustainability. REDD+ and social forestry requires an inclusive process. Purposeful multistakeholder participation throughout the decision-making process can increase the credibility and legitimacy of a program and enhance its chances of successful outcomes

Countries are grappling with how to integrate social safeguards into national and subnational REDD+ architectures. Safeguard policies are intended to ensure that people are not harmed or made worse off by REDD+.

In many countries, the state owns or manages forests in the national interests of economic development, ecosystem service provision or biodiversity conservation. A national approach to reducing deforestation and forest degradation and the enhancement of forest carbon stocks (REDD+) will thus most likely involve governmental entities at different governance levels from central to local. Sub-national governments that implement REDD+ activities will generate carbon ecosystem services and potentially other co-benefits, such as biodiversity conservation, and in the process incur implementation and opportunity costs for these actions. This occasional paper analyses the literature on ecological fiscal transfers (EFTs), with a focus on experiences in Brazil and Portugal, to draw lessons for how policy instruments for intergovernmental transfers can be designed in a national REDD+ benefit-sharing system. EFTs can be an effective policy instrument for improving revenue adequacy and fiscal equalization across a country. They facilitate financial allocations based on a sub-national government’s environmental performance, and could also partly compensate the costs of REDD+ implementation. We find that intergovernmental EFTs targeting sub-national public actors can be an important element of policy mix for REDD+ benefit sharing, particularly in a decentralized governance system, as decisions on forest and land use are being made at sub-national levels. Given the increasing focus and interest on jurisdictional REDD+, EFTs may have a role in filling the shortfall of revenues for REDD+ readiness and for implementing enabling actions related to forest governance. If EFTs are to have efficient and equitable outcomes, however, they will require strong information-sharing and transparency systems on environmental indicators and performance, and the disbursement and spending of EFT funds across all levels

The issue of REDD+ benefit sharing has captured the attention of policymakers and local communities because the success of REDD+ will depend greatly on the design and implementation of its benefit?sharing mechanism. Despite a large body of literature on potential benefit?sharing mechanisms for REDD+, the field has lacked global comparative analyses of national REDD+ policies and of the political?economic influences that can either enable or impede the mechanisms. Similarly, relatively few studies have investigated the political?economic principles underlying existing benefit?sharing policies and approaches. This working paper builds on a study of REDD+ policies in 13 countries to provide a global overview and up?to?date profile of benefit?sharing mechanisms for REDD+ and of the political?economic factors affecting their design and setting. Five types of benefit?sharing models relevant to REDD+ and natural resource management are used to create an organising framework for identifying what does and does not work and to examine the structure of rights under REDD+. The authors also consider the mechanisms in light of five prominent discourses on the question of who should benefit from REDD+ and, by viewing REDD+ through a 3E (effectiveness, efficiency, equity) lens, map out some of the associated risks for REDD+ outcomes. Existing benefit?sharing models and REDD+ projects have generated initial lessons for building REDD+ benefit?sharing mechanisms. However, the relevant policies in the 13 countries studied could lead to carbon ineffectiveness, cost inefficiency and inequity because of weak linkages to performance or results, unclear tenure and carbon rights, under?representation of certain actors, technical and financial issues related to the scope and scale of REDD+, potential elite capture and the possible negative side effects of the decentralisation of authority. Furthermore, the enabling factors for achieving 3E benefit?sharing mechanisms are largely absent from the study countries. Whether REDD+ can catalyse the necessary changes will depend in part on how the costs and benefits of REDD+ are shared, and whether the benefits are sufficient to affect a shift in entrenched behaviour and policies at all levels of government. The successful design and implementation of benefit?sharing mechanisms – and hence the legitimacy and acceptance of REDD+ – depend on having clear objectives, procedural equity and an inclusive process and on engaging in a rigorous analysis of the options for benefit sharing and their potential effects on beneficiaries and climate mitigation efforts.