Advancing Understanding of Natural Forest Carbon Stock Enhancement as part of REDD+ (ENRICH I & II)

Lowering the density and diversity of forests will negatively affect its ability to function as natural store for carbon gases. As both Vietnam and Lao PDR contain large areas of degraded forests, the issue of forest carbon stock enhancement should be an integral part of any National REDD+ Strategy. Forest carbon stock enhancement focuses on the creation or improvement of carbon pools and their capacity to store carbon. It includes forest management activities such as restoring existing but degraded forests and increasing forest cover through environmentally appropriate afforestation and reforestation. The ‘Advancing Understanding of Natural Forest Carbon Stock Enhancement as part of REDD+’ project aims to advance our understanding of forest carbon stock enhancement as part of any future REDD+ agreement.

Phase II of the project, which started in April 2015 and will end in April 2018, aims to build on the lessons of the phase I. in phase II, SNV will scale-up and implement measures for ecologically and socially compatible rehabilitation of forest ecosystems at the landscape level that have been tested and proven during the first phase of the project. The project will explore how to integrate non-carbon benefits into any payment and monitoring mechanism across the landscape and will build upon already developing national schemes to pay for forest protection. To date the project achieved the following results:

• Advanced understanding and application of forest carbon stock enhancement as part of international REDD+ discussions;

• Introduced demonstration pilot activities for the enhancement of forest carbon stocks in representative forest ecosystems;

• Forest carbon stock enhancement demonstration activities are replicated and scaled up as part of REDD+ in Vietnam and Lao PDR, covering 5,000 hectares;

• Completed studies on the recommended options for: 1) Incentivising forest landscape restoration; 2) Incentivising and sharing multiple benefits from REDD+; 3) Forest landscape restoration: Land use incentives;

• Completed scoping report on potential forest landscape restoration areas;

• Technical guidance materials have been developed and disseminated on inclusion of forest carbon stock enhancement as part of REDD+.

The interventions of the first phase of this project, between November 2011 and February 2015, focused on exploring the technical and economic feasibility of different forest carbon stock enhancement strategies in pilot sites across Vietnam and Lao PDR. The project, funded by the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety (BMUB), also assessed the socio-economic feasibility of different strategies and incentives, which need to be in place to engage local communities and improve their living conditions. The first phase of this project showed the way in how forest enrichment can be part of any national REDD+ scheme. During phase I of this project, SNV also encountered a number of issues that hinder scaling-up results and that will be addressed during the second phase of the project. These issues were:

• The need for a greater emphasis on sub-national planning;

• The inclusion of wider ecological benefits of forest protection and to align to existing national payment schemes;

• Addressing the drivers of deforestation and forest degradation;

• The need for simplified benefit distribution systems to pay for performance on forest carbon stock enhancement