Presented by Amy Duchelle of the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) at the COP24, Katowice, Poland (6 Dec 2018)

1. Understanding what works in forest-based
climate change mitigation
Amy Duchelle
UNFCCC COP24 Official Side Event – Katowice, Poland
06 December 2018

2. FORESTS AS KEY TO CLIMATE SOLUTION
• Staying below 1.5oC
depends on forest
protection, sustainable
forest management, and
restoration
• What have different forest-
based mitigation actions
achieved so far?
• Rigorous impact evaluation
needed to promote learning
and inform future efforts

3. Börner et al. 2016. PLOS ONE
FOREST CONSERVATION IMPACT OF POLICIES & PROGRAMS

4. REVIEW OF REDD+ LITERATURE: MANY CASE STUDIES; LITTLE
FOCUS ON FOREST OUTCOMES
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18
case report
case-control study: no confounders
considered
case-control study: some confounders
considered
case-control study: pre-matched
controls
randomized control trial
systematic review
# studies
carbon
non-carbon
participation
Duchelle et al. 2018. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability

5. IMPACT EVALUATION OF LOCAL REDD+ INITIATIVES
Comparison
(Control)
REDD+ site
(Intervention)
Before After
IMPACT
Intervention
After
Control
After
Intervention
Before
Control
Before
• 6 countries
• 22 initiatives
• 150 villages
• 4,000
households
CIFOR’s Global Comparative Study on REDD+: www.cifor.org/gcs

6. FOREST & LAND USE OUTCOMES
The few evaluations of local REDD+ initiatives on forest/land use
outcomes show moderately encouraging results
Simonet et al. 2018. Transforming REDD+ Book.

7. SOCIAL & OTHER ENVIRONMENTAL OUTCOMES
• Well-being effects small,
with mixed sign, but more
likely to be positive when
incentive components
included
• Land tenure highlighted as
persistent challenge
• Studies on biodiversity
and adaptation outcomes
scarce
Duchelle et al. 2018, Sunderlin et al. 2018. Transforming REDD+ Book

8. Stickler, C.M., A.E. Duchelle, J.P. Ardila, D.C. Nepstad, et al. 2018. The State of
Jurisdictional Sustainability. Earth Innovation Institute, San Francisco, USA; CIFOR, Bogor,
Indonesia; Governors’ Climate and Forests Task Force Secretariat, Boulder, USA.
NEW RESEARCH ON SUBNATIONAL JURISDICTIONAL
APPROACHES
Side Event: 10th Dec. 16:45-18:15, Narew

9. TAKE-AWAY MESSAGES
• Need for more reliable evidence on
impacts of forest-based mitigation
• Challenges in evaluating impacts of
real-world policies and programs
(controls, diversity of interventions,
real effects vs. general noise of data,
etc.)
• Call for scientific upgrade in impact
evaluations (“Conservation Impact
Evaluation 2.0”)

10. cifor.org
blog.cifor.org
ForestsTreesAgroforestry.org
THANK YOU
www.cifor.org/gcs