Land Use and Forestry

Delve deeper into the issues that interest you the most and know that you are at the cutting edge of the climate finance conversation. CMIA’s working groups give our members the opportunity to share their unique expertise and push the advocacy of climate finance and investments, instruments and best practices on complex issues.

Fact File

Name: Land Use and Forestry Working Group

Chairs: Christina Elvers, Sustainability and Climate Change, PwC and Roberta Iley, Sustainability and Climate Change, PwC

Contact: [email protected]; [email protected]

Purpose: Forestry and land use play a crucial role when it comes to tackling climate change. Emissions from the sector amount to about 12% of emissions globally and reducing these are vital. CMIA is focussed on the development of REDD+ and LULUCF initiatives, including accounting processes, methodologies, finance, donor and government led mechanisms.

Current Focus:

  • Internal learning and sharing with regards to smallholder finance, trade regulations and financial products.
  • External advocacy and convening around climate finance for sustainable land-use.
  • A knowledge hub for external parties.

Delve Deeper

Forest conservation, and specifically reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+), is one of the key approaches recognised as having transformative potential for both adaptation and mitigation under the Paris Agreement. Tropical forests are a key opportunity, with the ability to contribute up to a third of the carbon mitigation needed to keep us within 2°C of warming. However, a forest area the size of South Africa has already been lost since 1990 and the changes needed to halve emissions from the forestry sector are estimated to cost US$17-33bn per year. To-date, less than $3bn has been disbursed by the public sector for REDD+, leaving a sizable funding gap.

Private sector investment in conservation to-date is estimated at $8.2bn (2004-2015), with significant amounts of money targeted towards sustainable agriculture and forestry, but only a small amount going specifically to REDD+ efforts. Private sector interest has grown considerably in recent years and new financing vehicles are emerging. Whilst this is currently only on a small scale, the opportunity is considerable: it is estimated that the reallocation of just 1% of new and reinvested capital from the private sector investor segments (High Net Worth individuals/ Ultra High Net Worth individuals, retail and institutional investors) would be enough to meet the conservation financing gap.

As the GCF sets up its new pilot programme for REDD+ and the FCPF begins to sign its first contracts for REDD+ results based payments, levering further private sector investment using blended finance approaches is crucial for forest conservation.

Latest News