Counting On Forests And Accounting For Forest Contributions To National Climate Change Actions

This paper constitutes a meta-analysis of the first national communications submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in which important climate risks and opportunities for using forest to alleviate these risks were identified. Gap analyses were carried out in seven case study countries in central America (Costa Rica, Honduras, Nicaragua), west Africa (Burkina Faso, Ghana, Mali) and southeast Asia (Indonesia), which form part of the Tropical Forests and Climate Change Adaptation (TroFCCA) project of the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza (CATIE). An overall conclusion is that climate change adaptation in tropical countries requires substantial information on forests, which must be timely and accurate, and that needs to be integrated into an adaptive management policy framework.

Released every three years since March 2003, the United Nations World Water Development Report (WWDR), a flagship UN-Water report published by UNESCO, has become the voice of the United Nations system in terms of the state, use and management of the world's freshwater resources. The report is primarily targeted at national decision-makers and water resource managers, but is also aimed at educating and informing a broader audience, from governments to the private sector and civil society. It underlines the important roles water plays in all social, economic and environmental decisions, highlighting policy implications across various sectors, from local and municipal to regional and international levels. Similarly to the first two editions, this report includes a comprehensive and up-to-date assessment of several key challenge areas, such as water for food, energy and human health, and governance challenges such as institutional reform, knowledge and capacity-building, and financing, each produced by individual UN agencies.

Focuses on how forests and land-use change can both exacerbate and mitigate climate change. The report identifies opportunities presented in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol for the conservation, improved management and restoration of forests, explaining why their role has proved controversial.

These guidelines have been prepared to assist forest managers to better assess and respond to climate change challenges and opportunities at the forest management unit level. The actions they propose are relevant to all kinds of forest managers--such as individual forest owners, private forest enterprises, public-sector agencies, indigenous groups and community forest organizations. They are applicable in all forests types and regions and for all management objectives. This document complements a set of guidelines prepared by FAO in 2010 to support policy-makers in integrating climate change concerns into new or existing forest policies and national forests programs.

Tropical forests are an undervalued asset in meeting the greatest global challenges of our time—averting climate change and promoting development. Despite their importance, tropical forests and their ecosystems are being destroyed at a high and even increasing rate in most forest-rich countries. The good news is that the science, economics, and politics are aligned to support a major international effort over the next five years to reverse tropical deforestation. Why Forests? Why Now? synthesizes the latest evidence on the importance of tropical forests in a way that is accessible to anyone interested in climate change and development and to readers already familiar with the problem of deforestation. It makes the case to decisionmakers in rich countries that rewarding developing countries for protecting their forests is urgent, affordable, and achievable.

REDD+ is one of the leading near-term options for global climate change mitigation. More than 300 subnational REDD+ initiatives have been launched across the tropics, responding to both the call for demonstration activities in the Bali Action Plan and the market for voluntary carbon offset credits.