REDD+ Readiness and Implementation in Peru
Claudio Schneider (Conservation International Peru)

Peru is one of the countries that has been very cautious about REDD from the beginning and some say thishas been a smart approach to REDD, but this is due mostly to certain conditions that took place in thecountry.

First of all, if we look at REDD in general and we look at the international level, we have theUNFCCC framework.

Then, we have non-UNFCCC systems like the California schemes or somebilateral schemes between states or sub-national governments.

Then we have the voluntary markets too.

At the national level in Peru, we have 3 distinct levels as well. We have the national government, we havesub-national governments, provinces or states, and at the smallest scale, we have civil society organizations.
At the national level, the government is working at the Development of National REDD Program, but there
is also the possibility of implementing REDD Projects in public areas as well.

At the subnational level,subnational governments are also developing their programs and they could also have REDD Projects inpublic areas that belong to the sub-national government. Then we have civil society organizations, which
are basically the component that has been leading the development of REDD in the country from thebeginning.

There are about 35 projects in Peru at different stages of development, the first of which started to bedeveloped about 5 years ago.

The government basically looked at this and decided to learn from this civilsociety or private experiences in order to build or develop the National REDD Program.

Why did theGovernment of Peru decide to do this? It is due to several reasons: The first one, probably the mostimportant one is that civil society and private sector took the lead and some of their REDD- projects are
already generating emission reductions. At the national level, the government has been basically taking
its time to develop policies, so it is going to take a while to come up with a national program.

In themeantime, there are other national policies that also favor this approach, as the country has started adecentralization process by which

subnational governments, provinces are getting more authority overtheir resources. Finally, the government is trying to promote investments at the subnational level.

I am going to start describing each one of these levels of REDD, starting with the project level.

I amgoing to focus on a particular example, which is the Alto Mayo Project, which is a project that has beendeveloped by Conservation International. The Alto Mayo Project achieved verification in October.

It is the first verified project of Conservation International, but is also the first REDD verified project in anational protected area and the fifth verified REDD Project worldwide. It is also the largest verified
REDD Project to-date, in terms of hectares, and it is also the single largest corporate investment in REDD.
This is important because the success of implementing REDD actions, REDD activities on the groundneeds the support from different funding sources and private-public alliances are a very effective way ofobtaining the resources necessary to achieve these activities on the ground.

This is a map of the Alto Mayo, which depicts the history of deforestation as determined with satellite
imagery from 1996 to 2006. This is the projection that we obtained through modeling of the area. The
Alto Mayo is probably the protected area in Peru that has the highest rate of deforestation in the country.
It is crossed by a highway of national importance and is basically an area that is extremely threatened bymigrants coming from depressed areas in the Andes into the Amazon.

.We developed PDDs 1 that were consistent with the guidelines of the VCS and CCB 2 Standards We
measured about 150 current plots, and set up a monitoring system to reduce deforestation.

On average,

we are able to reduce emissions of about half a million tons of carbon and that will result in about a million
dollars of resources that will be directly applied to the management of the area.

As I mentioned, theproject has been validated and verified under two standards, the Verified Carbon Standards and the CCBstandard, so it is also providing significant co-benefits for communities, biodiversity, watershed protection,and climate adaptation.

1Project Design Document

2

The Climate, Community & Biodiversity Alliance: http://www.climate-standards.org

Our initiatives in the area do not stop there.

We intend to work in a much larger area following theapproach taken by the Peruvian Government in developing Subnational Jurisdictional Nested Models.
The state of San Martin, where the Alto Mayo project is located, is also developing a REDD Program andfollowing an initiative started by the project developers in the area. There are about four different REDD
Projects being developed or implemented in San Martin.

They decided to get together with thegovernment to develop a REDD Program in order to allow the government of San Martin to work on areas
not directly threatened, but that could be potentially threatened in the future.

At the subnational level, the idea is to work together with stakeholders to develop the capacity of thegovernment to establish baselines, reference scenarios, and to come up with a strategy that would allow thegovernment of San Martin to implement a REDD Program at the jurisdictional level and that could serve asa model for the national government of Peru to develop a national strategy.

The government of Peru

stated in its RPP 3 submitted to FCPF 4 that San Martin and Madre de Dios are the regions where themodels for REDD are going to be developed, but then are going to be used in the rest of the country for the3

Readiness Preparation Proposal

4

Forest Carbon Partnership Facility: http://www.forestcarbonpartnership.org

development of a national strategy.

A very important component of this collaborative work in San Martin was the creation of the REDD RoundTable. The REDD Round Table is a very effective platform where all stakeholders, public and private andindigenous communities are getting together periodically to discuss REDD issues and to develop the actual
information required to implement REDD and they have been doing this in a very structured way.

It isimportant to mention that the national government is also participating in these REDD Round Tables
because it is important to involve the government early on at all the scales of REDD development.

Thereis a direct coordination between the subnational initiatives and the national REDD authorities as well.
The REDD Round Table has two working groups: One that specializes in developing the reference
scenarios, the baselines, the carbon stock inventories or the technical aspects of REDD, and another groupthat focuses on the social issues of REDD, which are perhaps more important. It is a model of effective
stakeholder engagement and participation of all sectors of society involved with REDD.

Through the work of the REDD Round Table, we have created baselines and reference scenarios. We
have analyzed drivers and agents of deforestation. We have jointly conducted the carbon stock inventoryof the area and this is a very important aspect of the bottom-up approach because all projects as well, as thegovernment, have contributed data from the corresponding areas and from areas in-between projects tocome up with the carbon stock inventory for the entire region. This has resulted in a collaborativemodeling.

It is also important to note that doing this in a collaborative manner is also very importantbecause all stakeholders need to agree and validate the modeling, the reference scenarios and the data
produced.
Finally, at the national level, it is important to note this tiered approach also fits very well with the phased
approach being described.

Projects leading the way by providing valuable lessons to the nationalgovernments going up both to subnational and national governments while deforestation is already being
stopped at the project level, which is important.
a national strategy to stop deforestation.

We are not waiting to have the national government enact

We are stopping deforestation right now and providing thenational government with important lessons on how to put all these initiatives together into a coherent andenvironmentally sound program for the entire country.
have.

I would be glad to answer any questions you might