International
Climate Initiative (IKI)

The project aimed at preserving forest ecosystems in the Pacific and thus contributed to climate change mitigation. It supported four island states in creating the conditions necessary for participation in an international financing mechanism for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+). The project partners worked together to develop REDD+ strategies and policies and boosted their capacities in the field of measuring, reporting and verification (MRV) of emission reductions at national level. At local level the project worked with communities and user groups to implement REDD+ pilot projects that directly protected the forest. At regional level, a coherent comprehensive REDD+ policy framework was developed. Furthermore, the project established a regional REDD+ information and supported platform by setting up a virtual network of users and REDD+ specialists, installing a data platform and carrying out training on operating the network.

Project completed

• Joint policy framework for REDD+ approved at the Third Regional Conference of the Ministers of Agriculture and Forestry in Nadi, Fiji (September 2012)
• Workshops with forestry service providers from the Pacific island states and REDD+ representatives from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change carried out for planning and implementing the project's regional components (REDD+ policy framework and information platform)
• Knowledge and implementation capacities built up through regional/national training on REDD+: by the end of 2011, there were ten trainings (introductory and substantive) on REDD+ with 191 participants
• Establishment of national REDD+ committees as technical subcommittees of the national management groups for climate policy in Fiji and Papua New Guinea supported; similar proposals have been made for the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu
• Work plan submitted for determining the reference level and establishing the carbon-monitoring component of the MRV system in Vanuatu; forest inventory with carbon measurements in preparation on the four main islands
• Study on the legal dimension of forest carbon (carbon rights) and the resulting need for legislative reform carried out in the four Melanesian countries