Facilitators Training Course on Developing Sub-national REDD+ Action Plans (SRAP)

A REDD+ National Strategy (NS) or National REDD+ Action Plan (AP) is mandatory under the UNFCCC for any country wishing to receive international REDD+ payments. This accreditation is vital because inappropriate policies, measures and governance arrangements, across several sectors, must be addressed for REDD+ to be successful.  In most countries there are significant sub-national differences in forest ecosystems and D&FD drivers that make it important for REDD+ planning and implementation happens at the sub-national and local level.

A Sub-national REDD+ Action Plan (SRAP) responds to the challenge of operationalizing an NS or AP and its component policies and measures (PAMs) by tailoring them to address locally specific deforestation and forest degradation drivers and barriers to expanding (forest carbon) enhancement activities. Sub-national planning also allows local stakeholder participation in the planning process, which will increase the transparency, ownership and social sustainability of REDD+ programmes.  If possible SRAPs should be undertaken after a detailed NS process so that the SRAP process can build on and complement the national PAMs, and because this sequencing should result in a more streamlined and cost-effective SRAP process while ensuring the overall national coherence of REDD+.

ICIMOD, with technical assistance from UN-REDD-FAO, focused on the development of District REDD+ Action Plans (DRAP) for Chitwan from 2014-15. The methodology used in Chitwan was guided by the UN-REDD Viet Nam Phase II programme. The Chitwan DRAP has since been endorsed by district authorities and RIC, and the DRAP methodology has been adopted by RIC and MoFSC for inclusion in the planning of REDD+ pilot interventions throughout the Terai Arc Landscape (TAL), to be financed through the Carbon Fund of the FCPF. To allow for the potential future application of the methodology to other administrative levels, MoFSC has adopted the methodology under the acronym LRAP (Local REDD+ Action Plans). After, the successful completion of DRAP for Chitwan, ICIMOD again received the fund to develop LRAP for Ilam district of Nepal, which is in the final stage. From this experience, ICIMOD has become the pioneer in developing SRAP in HKH region.

The Sub-national REDD+ action plan (SRAP) can contribute to the national level policies related to REDD+ for each partner country which also fulfills one of the monitoring requirement of UNFCCC i.e. Policies and measures.

Objectives

The main objective of this training course is to train facilitators from India and Myanmar with detailed steps and procedure that need to put on while developing SRAP for their country.

Participants

This training course will be attended by officials from Myanmar, India and ICIMOD. ICIMOD will support the cost for all the participants according to the policy of ICIMOD. There will be around 16 participants in this four days’ training.

Expected outcomes

By the end of this training, all the facilitator’s will be self-reliant on the procedural techniques that will be used during the Multi-stakeholder’s consultation process for developing SRAP for Shan State and State of Mizoram. In addition, they will be able to develop the detailed SRAP with monitoring plan, operational plan and budget.