Bhutan is well on its way to developing a National Strategy for Reducing of Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation or REDD+. It is a mechanism to mitigate the adverse effects of climate change under international climate change framework.
With 71% of the country under forest cover and more than 815 million tree-counts, Bhutan has a bright spot under this mechanism. The country started creating awareness on REDD+ concept in 2010.
Internationally, REDD+ received explicit recognition in 2015 Paris climate agreement.
“Since this concept was quite new to Bhutan, the works mostly included creating awareness on concept and how it was designed under the international mechanism. So it was mostly in the form of workshops and seminars and other awareness programs starting from national level and even in 2012 -2013 we started creating awareness at Dzongkhag level,” said the Deputy Chief Forestry Officer under watershed management division of agriculture ministry, Sigyel Delma.
However, it was only in 2014-2015 that the REDD+ readiness program started to pick up.
Department of Forests and Park Services is implementing the REDD+ readiness program. The REDD+ readiness activities include awareness, intuitional capacity building, and collecting information on carbon stock changes, which is basically studying forest cover change.
The department has also completed a study on drivers of deforestation and degradation and also the obstacles hindering the implementation of conservation and sustainable forest management activities.
“We will start development of REDD + strategy action plan now. So we will be looking at all those causes and drivers and accordingly design interventions or management, policy and measures that can be implemented to improve our forest management and also enhance the carbon sequestration capacity of our forest,” added Sigyel Delma.
REDD+ is an initiative with a three phase approach. These include developing national strategies, implementation of strategies and investment.
In the third phase, country applies to access the payment mechanism under the REDD+ initiative. The payment mechanism allows countries to sell carbon credits through bi-lateral agreements or receive payments for carbon credits through the Green Climate Fund.
