Co-Chairs’ Summary: Sixth REDD Readiness Dialogue

Between October 2009 and November 2010 The Forests Dialogue (TFD) in partnershipwith IUCN, organized international REDD-readiness field dialogues in five countries including Brazil, Ghana, Guatemala, Ecuador and Cambodia. The field dialogues are part of TFD’s REDD Readiness Initiative that seeks to understand how selected countries are actively engaged in REDD-readiness activities. The field dialogues have shed light on the common issues countries are facing to get REDD-ready and demonstrated the importance of addressing country-specific issues and challenges early on in the process. The Initiative has been sponsored by NORAD.

On 17-18 March, in an effort to build on the last 5 field dialogues and to consolidate learning from this initiative so far, TFD convened an international dialogue at the IUCN headquarters in Gland, Switzerland. The Initiative has produced a wealth of information and understanding to date and the meeting gave the participants an opportunity to reflect on the quickly changing REDD-Readiness landscape and how to help countries and stakeholders improve the process. The objectives of the Gland Dialogue were to:

• reflect on the practical challenges of the REDD-readiness phase;
• analyze the paths to REDD+ that several countries have followed to date;
• discuss what needs to change to help get countries ready for REDD+;
• develop a collective strategy to help realize that change.