National Strategy for Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) (Tanzania)

Plan

National REDD+ Strategy

Summary

The National REDD+ Strategy is based on the National Framework for REDD+ developed in 2009 and is linked to current national growth and development strategies such as the National Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy Programme (MKUKUTA) and the National Vision 2025. The goal of the strategy is to facilitate effective and coordinated implementation of REDD+ related policies, processes and activities so as to contribute to climate change mitigation/adaptation and overall sustainable development. This will involve establishing a national reference scenario, provision of guidelines on how to assess, monitor and determine carbon benefits, ensure participation of stakeholders, establish a fair and transparent payment mechanism, provide a robust system of verification of carbon benefits, and build capacity for research, training, infrastructure and equipment to support REDD+.

Institutional arrangements

The National REDD+ Task Force is responsible for the Development and implementation of the Strategy. This, however, is an interim structure and the permanent structures of the National Climate Change Steering Committee and the National Climate Change Technical Committee will take over the role of the Task Force at a later stage.

Stakeholder engagement and participation

The plan will employ a participatory approach to ensure engagement of all stakeholders in the implementation of REDD+ schemes. This will be done through training of forest adjacent/dependent communities on REDD+, training and promoting active private sector and civil society engagement and support of REDD+, and also adapting in the REDD+ scheme best practices and lessons learnt in engagement of all stakeholders

Land tenure arrangements and carbon rights

The plan will tackle issues of insecure land and forest tenure by supporting participatory land use planning and implementation of land reforms.

Forest management

A national REDD+ coordination framework in line with existing structures and based on results of legal and institutional in-depth studies will be developed, there will be REDD+ coordination capacity building at all levels and support for existing and functioning conflict resolution mechanisms.

Reference levels

The country deforestation baseline will be determined by depicting historical and land use changes from satellite imageries and typical carbon stock data for different types of forests to calculate the changes in terms of tons of carbon. However, it is important to note that Tanzania has inadequate resources to access remote sensed data and even the available ground data on forest carbon stocks are in patches and inadequate. Degradation and forest enhancement will therefore need to be captured within the MRV system and a national REDD+ baseline established through a National Carbon Accounting System (NCAS-T) as the data becomes available. Meanwhile, a system of interlocked baselines will be adopted to operationalize REDD+ internally in different geographic regions and to account for carbon in different forest regimes such as national parks, forest reserves, community and private forests. The sum of the different baselines from different regions and forest regimes will add up to the national reference scenario.

Safeguards

Forest dependent communities were involved in a consultative process when the strategy was being developed. Issues raised during the process include: REDD+ based land use system changes must aim at ensuring basic food security for the nation and to improve national standards of nutrition by increasing output, quality and availability of food commodities. This can will be achieved through optimal use of land resources and broad-based social economic development without upsetting or endangering the ecological balance of the environment. Another identified issue is the need to harmonize policies and sectors to accomodate the changes in the forestry system and new demands posed by the REDD+ initiative

MRV

The National Forest Resources Monitoring and Assessment (NAFORMA) has been adopted as the national framework for assessment, monitoring, reporting and verification of REDD+ related activities, data and information. NAFORMA is expected to train national experts on national forest inventories and remote sensing, determine land use cover changes in the past, identify drivers of deforestation, produce a map showing different forest types and their detailed stocking parameters, conduct case studies to quantify emission factors for different forest types and design a forest monitoring system using Permanent Sampling Plots (PSP).