Integrating Communities into REDD+ in Indonesia

The Government of Indonesia (GOI) is in
the process of designing a national REDD+ mechanism to allow
it to access donor funding in the medium term, and funding
from a potential performance based mechanism in the long
term. This policy brief is focused on the broad question of
how REDD+ can address underlying community issues such as
lack of access to forest land, and does not deal with the
more specific questions of legal and institutional
frameworks for such a mechanism. More specifically, the
brief highlights the need and opportunity for integrating
community development approaches into a REDD+ framework. The
brief is based largely on a review of literature on Payments
for Ecosystem Services (PES) programs, on interviews with a
number of representatives from Indonesian small grants
programs, and on discussions with the team that is involved
in the implementation of PNPM programs at the World Bank
Office in Jakarta. Indonesia is a major Green House Gas
(GHG) emitter (about 2.1 gigatons of carbon dioxide
equivalent in 2005) and most of the emissions come from
deforestation and peatland degradation. Indonesia has
approximately 94 million hectares of natural and planted
forests, representing around 52 percent of its total land
area. The Ministry of environment estimates that in 2000, as
much as 60 percent of Indonesia's total GHG emissions
were due to land use changes, including deforestation,
forest degradation and peat loss. In recent years, REDD+ has
become a focus of policy development in Indonesia. The
Forestry Research and Development Agency (FORDA) took the
lead in 2007 by forming the Indonesia Forest Climate
Alliance (IFCA) to articulate a national approach in
response to shifting opportunities emerging from
international negotiations on climate action and financing.