On Monday 14th November, UNDP’s Climate and Forests team hosted a full day of events in the UNDP Pavilion. Of the 28 speakers invited across five sessions, 23 were women leaders from UNDP, Indigenous Peoples organizations, Governments, NGOs, and UN partner agencies. Having so many knowledgeable women speak on what was also COP27 gender day was a powerful demonstration of the contribution women make to forest solutions.
The day started with an informal networking session with partners working together to mobilize finance for climate and forests, including the Forest Declaration Platform partners: Meridian Institute, Climate Focus, and Climate Advisers; the Governors Climate and Forests Task Force; and the Forest for Life partners.
Next, the following session was an all-women panel assessing different options for financing high-integrity forests, and how to channel these funds directly to Indigenous territories.
The next session focused on harnessing forest carbon markets for NDC implementation in Africa, featuring an all-African women panel. Ahunna Eziakonwa, UNDP's Assistant Administrator and Regional Director for Africa joined national Climate Commissioners from Ghana and Uganda, along with UNEP and the West African Alliance for Carbon Markets. Ahunna captured the spirit of the session in her conclusions in the following video:
“What gives me hope today is that carbon markets are only just emerging in Africa and already we have these voices of women. The question is: how to we deploy this capacity....to the space of the debate. The first thing I am thinking of is that UNDP needs to establish an African Carbon Markets Access Facility.”
The next discussion unpacked what it takes to channel REDD+ incentives to the ground through a conversation among representatives of Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Indonesia, countries that collectively received around US $270M from the GCF REDD+ Results-Based Payments pilot program in partnership with UNDP. They highlighted the role of benefit-sharing and distribution of proceeds mechanisms to allow deploying funds rapidly and at scale, including through UNDP’s performance-based payments policy. These countries use enhanced mechanisms to channel funds to Indigenous Peoples and local communities through incentive-based schemes (i.e., payments for ecosystem services).
The next session was highly anticipated, as it was the first ever discussion with the architects of the Forest Climate Leadership Partnership, which held its first Ministerial meeting of its 27 countries + the EU at COP27 on Saturday 12th November. UNDP convened the sherpas to the co-chairs (USA and Ghana), the lead representative from the UK COP26 Presidency, as well as the youth representative that spoke at the FCLP launch during the World Leaders’ Summit on 7th November. Participants discussed how to ensure the partnership fosters real action and collaboration and builds upon complementary efforts towards the common goal of ending deforestation by 2030. Germany’s contribution to UNDP in order to provide interim financial management was recognised.
The day closed with a celebration of Ecuador’s deforestation-free coffee and cocoa production and launch of its national deforestation-free certification scheme, highlighting the successful production model established in partnership with the coffee company Lavazza.
UNDP facilitated a conversation between Ecuador’s Minister of Environment, Water and Ecological Transition, the Under-Secretary for Climate Change; and Lavazza’s Director of Sustainability, who was honoured with a sustainability award from the Government of Ecuador.
In parallel, UNDP also launched the Paris Agreement LULUCF Assessment & NDC Tool (PLANT). The tool is used by tropical forest developing countries to evaluate options and support decisions for the implementation of their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) and to develop forest carbon market strategies.
Additional Resources:
To see a detailed list of speakers and photos from the event day, check out our Twitter Moments below:
To watch the full recordings of the sessions, click the Youtube playlist above ↑
To find out more about UNDP's paradigm shift in performance-based payments, read our latest blog here:
