Legal and institutional framework for a national and regional REDD+ program in Ethiopia

Climate Focus is supporting the Government of Ethiopia to create a legal and institutional framework that will lead to the coordination and implementation of the REDD+ readiness process at the national level and at the regional level (Oromia State).

REDD+, the international mechanisms that promotes incentives to address the destruction of forests and to increase carbon stocks is a key pillar of Ethiopia’s national Climate Resilient Green Economy (CRGE), which envisions bringing the country to middle income status by 2025 through an environmentally sustainable and climate resilient economy while maintaining zero net greenhouse gas emissions.The Oromia region has been selected as a national pilot region for REDD+ and is the first region to receive results-based support from the World Bank’s BioCarbon Fund for jurisdictional and landscape level emission reductions.

Since April 2014, Climate Focus has been implementing a World Bank-funded project that develops legal and institutional frameworks for the implementation of the national REDD+ program and the jurisdictional landscape program of Oromia. The project supports the Government of Ethiopia in achieving REDD+ readiness and in creating a framework for the implementation of REDD+ in Ethiopia and Oromia, and in preparing a results-based transaction for the Oromia Forested Landscape Carbon Finance Project.

Our team, together with national experts, has been closely cooperating with the government, facilitating presentations and discussions, and actively participating in various government workshops and World Bank missions. At both the national and regional levels, activities include devising detailed implementation arrangements for REDD+ related operations (e.g. intersectoral coordination, MRV and safeguards), REDD+ strategic options in the different sectors as well as recommendations for policy and legal reforms. In addition, the team is developing a framework for the allocation of REDD+ incentives and benefit sharing at the level of landscape interventions.

The team is currently in the process of finalizing its report and assessment.