Co-Chairs’ Summary: REDD+ Benefit Sharing Field Dialogue in Ghana

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In partnership with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), The Forests Dialogue (TFD) has been organizing a series of international dialogues under its initiative on REDD+ benefit sharing.  The initiative is part of IUCN’s project titled REDD+ Benefits: Facilitating Countries and Communities in the Design of Pro-poor REDD+ Benefit Sharing Schemes funded by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU), International Climate Initiative (ICI). The initiative aims to:

  •  Develop understanding of the current state of REDD+ benefit sharing in key REDD+ countries and identify the challenges for designing and implementing those mechanisms more broadly;
  •  Build a “community of practice” among locally-rooted, well-connected REDD practitioners to share experiences and develop practical tools that support effective, efficient and equitable benefit sharing for REDD+;
  • Promote appropriate economic, policy and institutional arrangements at the local, national and international levels to facilitate equitable, effective and efficient delivery of REDD+ benefit sharing mechanisms.

Under this initiative, TFD organized a scoping dialogue, hosted by the World Bank in March 2013, to identify key issues and challenges for designing REDD+ benefit sharing mechanisms. In addition to identifying key issues and challenges, it was agreed to run a series of field dialogues to further explore the concept. A first field dialogue was organized in Lam Dong, Vietnam, 24–27 September 2013. Based on the learning from the scoping dialogue and Vietnam, a second field dialogue was organized in Central Ghana, 2–5 December 2013. The dialogue engaged 26 international participants from 18 countries and 24 experts from Ghana, and it was co-hosted by IUCN Ghana office.

Dialogue participants spent two-days in the field where they visited and explored existing benefit sharing mechanisms in Kakum National Park and proposed ways to share benefits with communities at Portal Limited, a privately-owned company developing a REDD+ pilot project. Based on the field trip experiences as well as information shared by experts from Ghana, dialogue participants had two-day facilitated discussions in both plenary and small groups in Elmina, Ghana. This report summarizes key observations and discussions from the dialogue.