Strategies to Reduce Emissions or Increase Removals

In order to receive incentives from a REDD mechanism, a country or project must actually reduce emissions from deforestation or forest degradation and/or increase sequestration from enhancement of forest carbon stocks. In order to reduce emissions, strategies must be implemented that effectively address the drivers of deforestation or degradation in the country or project area. In order to enhance removals, strategies for restoring forests and planting trees would need to be put in place. Strategies used in a REDD+ mechanism may be the same or similar strategies that land managers and conservationists have used for decades to address deforestation and enhance forest carbon stocks. The key is that the strategies must credibly and verifiably reduce emissions and/or increase removals, they must be additional to actions that would have occurred in the absence of REDD+ financing, and they must provide for permanent forest protection. Examples of strategies that can be used in a REDD+ project  or program include: establishment of protected areas, reduced impact logging, stopping or reducing forest fires, undergoing forest certification, ensuring that land conversion occurs in degraded areas rather than in intact forest land, aiding the natural regeneration of forests, and planting trees.