Posted on October, 02 2015

Tanzania government is satisfied with the results of the REDD+ pilot project which was implemented in the country with funding provided by the government of Norway through the Royal Norwegian Embassy (RNE) and has appraised the efforts shown by the REDD+ partners who initiated the implementation of the programme in various parts of the country which includes Tanzania mainland and Zanzibar.

“REDD+ is good climate policy, according to the latest report from the international panel on climate change. 11% of the global greenhouse gas emissions come from deforestation and forest degradation. Reducing such emissions could deliver a quarter of the climate change mitigation, the world needs to stay on a two degrees warming path towards 2030.

There are ongoing negotiations to make sure that REDD+ is fully integrated into the international climate change agreement to be approved at Paris in December this year.” Says Mr. Sazi Salula, Vice presidents’ office permanent secretary

A number of communities across Tanzania have taken part in REDD+ pilot projects (2009 – 2014) with successful results. Through these projects, villagers have been given a say over how their villages land is to be used and this has resulted in better forest conservation efforts and an increase in agricultural production and sustainable income generating activities.

Recently in Dar es Salaam the Royal Norwegian Embassy organized stakeholders meeting to share the key findings and key lessons learnt in the implementation of seven REDD+ pilot projects in Tanzania through different non Governmental Organizations (NGO) including WWF Tanzania, AWF, CARE, JGI, MCDI, and WCS.

These projects were designed to test local approaches in implementing REDD+ across a range of social, institutional, tenure and ecological conditions.
 
In these pilot projects, WWF Tanzania was responsible to contribute core data to Tanzanian national Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) system through building Tanzanian capacity to deliver short and long term data on forest carbon stocks across the country.

The findings concluded that Tanzania is better placed towards completion of REDD+ readiness phase, since there is enough data collected through pilot Projects and the National Forest Resource Monitoring and Assessment -NAFORMA to develop national carbon monitoring verification and reporting- MRV in the country.

Moreover, the recently established National Carbon Monitoring Centre -NCMC is an important institution to collate data from different stakeholders to design MRV.

On another hand, Dr. Julius Ningu, Director of environment for Vice president’s office commented that Tanzania’s environment is under pressure from rapidly growing population. It increases the pressure for new land for agriculture and grazing, more trees for construction, fuel wood and charcoal.

As a result, forests face degradation. At the same time, these natural resources represent the most important basis for economic development and poverty reduction.

During the REDD+ stakeholders meeting, WWF Tanzania forest coordinator Mr. Isaac Malugu made a call, for the government to incorporate projects results into the government strategy in order to enrich national environmental initiatives. “Sustainable management of Tanzania’s forests can increase both local income and government revenues”, he said.

He however noted that “in accessing incentive under REDD+ performance based payment would not be possible unless main drivers of land use/cover changes (expansion of agriculture, demand of biomass energy and increased unplanned settlement) are addressed in national polices for economic development.”