National REDD+ Secretariat
Ethiopia launched a Climate Resilient Green Economy (CRGE) strategy in 2011 that aims at building a climate resilient economy with zero net national emissions in 2030 while keeping the fast economic growth to reach a middle income country by 2025`.The national GHG emissions was estimated at 150 million tCO2e in 2010, and with business-as-usual scenario the emission will reach at 400million tCO2e by 2030. In 2010, over 85% of the emission originates from land use sector, with 50% from agriculture sector and 37% from deforestation and forest degradation. The major drivers of deforestation and forest degradation are agricultural expansion and un sustainable fuel wood extraction.
Ethiopia initiated a readiness preparation proposal (R-PP) early in April 2010 and got it approved in October
2012. The country obtained a readiness fund of USD 3.6million from the FCPF of the World Bank. Additional USD10million readiness support was provided by the governments of Norway and UK with the World Bank as financial trustee. Ethiopia has been implementing REDD+ readiness (R-PP) since 2013. REDD+ in Ethiopia is an integral part of a bigger climate resilient green economy (CRGE) strategy. Ethiopia's CRGE strategy provides targets for reducing emissions and increasing climate resilience in 8 key sectors and compliments the country’s ambitious Growth and Transformation Plan (GTPs).
The forest sector, REDD+ as a major instrument for realizing the sector’s climate mitigation efforts, is one of the four pillars of the CRGE strategy with an abatement potential of 130MtCO2e and contributing significantly towards achieving a carbon neutral economy by 2030. Ethiopia has by now delivered on the four requirements of the Warsaw framework for REDD: prepared the national REDD+ strategy, developed the required safeguards instruments, set the baseline emissions and removals from the forest sector, and submitted the Forest Reference Level/FRL to UNFCCC in January 2016 for technical assessment.
Alongside the readiness, Ethiopia has completed the design of the Oromia Forested Landscape (REDD+) Program as a national pilot. Further, four REDD+ Coordination Units (RCUs) have been opened and made operational in Amhara, SNNP and Tigray regions for driving regional readiness and support the design of regional REDD+ programs.