REDD may still be at a standstill in Indonesia, but there is positive news coming out of the United Nations REDD Program. UN-REDD released its five-year strategic plan, and Nigeria is finalizing its readiness proposal to submit to the UN-REDD policy. More news inside this week’s Forest Carbon news.
As the US Congress and President Barack Obama spar over budget cuts, the $1 billion that the US pledged for REDD+ at the end of 2009 in Copenhagen remains lost in the fog. Republicans are keen to backtrack and put the landmark commitment on the chopping block.
VCS (formerly the Voluntary Carbon Standard, but now officially rebranded as the Verified Carbon Standard), meanwhile, has approved a new methodology for Improved Forest Management developed by GreenCollar Climate Solutions to intervene in forests slated for commercial logging. This makes the seventh forest methodology VCS has approved, all of which have been finalized within the past 10 months.
The UN-REDD Programme continues marching onwards, with the release of a five-year strategic plan, including expansion to additional countries to support REDD+ Readiness. In Nigeria, the national government convened stakeholders to help finalize the country’s Readiness Proposal which was invited for submission this month to the UN-REDD Policy Board.
You can read about all this and more in the latest edition of Ecosystem Marketplace’s Forest Carbon News Brief.