The Interim REDD+ Partnership: Light at the end of the Screw Ups?

David Ritter - 5th August 2010

As the Interim REDD+ Partnership process reconvenes in Bonn this week in conjunction with the latest UN Climate Change Conference (you can watch the proceedings here), information continues to emerge about the extent to which the last meeting held in Brasilia a few weeks ago was a debacle which has left the partners flustered and divided.

As set out in earlier blogs, the objective of the Interim REDD+ Partnership process is intended to speed up the transfer of finance earmarked for fighting emissions from deforestation from the developed world to the developing world. 

As previously reported, civil society was effectively excluded from the last meeting of the Interim REDD+ Partnership in Brasilia, prompting a welter of criticism from the global NGO community.  It has since emerged that the exclusion of civil society was merely one sign of a broader failure of the co-chairing countries – Japan and Papua New Guinea – to effectively convene and coordinate the event.

Officials from sympathetic governments have let it be known that the dysfunctional approach to dealing with civil society reflected a wider fiasco. Notice for the meeting was late for all participants (meaning that representatives from at least one major partner country were unable to attend the first day of the meeting), the agenda was horribly inadequate and there was no agreement on the work to be done in the course of the summit.  Nations championing the Interim REDD+ Partnership process were left frustrated and seething, forced to privately urge NGOs not to give up on the process. 

Summaries of country submissions presented in Brasilia tend to support the assessment that the sidelining of civil society was not a deliberate plan.  No doubt the some partners would be perfectly happy to have NGOs kept out of the way, but it seems clear that this does not represent the consensus view of the Interim REDD+ Partnership. 

Ironically, the fact that the exclusion of civil society was merely one aspect of a bigger screw up rather than any deliberate conspiracy should be the source of a certain amount of renewed hope.  Nevertheless among civil society, suspicions remain high.  It does not help that in addition to the sting of the most recent snubbing is plenty of scar tissue in relation to both climate change and deforestation.  Compounding the lasting pain from the wounds on hope and trust inflicted at COP15 of the UNFCCC at Copenhagen, are memories of years of egregious international failure to achieve effective collaboration on deforestation across various institutional contexts.  Ultimately, NGOs will only be reassured by demonstrations of effective and transparent action. 

Both optimism and momentum are desperately required not only for the Interim REDD+ Partnership but in the climate change process more generally, in which pessimism and dismal levels of ambition are the new normal.   The Interim REDD+ Partnership needs to get back on the road: to be ambitious and accountable; to engage respectfully with civil society; getting the scientists working and learning from decades of international experience as to what does and doesn’t work in tackling deforestation; and above all to promote and enforce key biodiversity and human rights safeguards.  Hopefully the talks in Bonn this week will mark the turning of the corner.