Active

Saving forests to keep our climate safe: REDD+

CLIMATE

About 11% of human-caused greenhouse gases come from the destruction of tropical forests. REDD+ is a climate change mitigation mechanism designed by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to reduce these emissions.

REDD+ creates an incentive for protecting, conserving, and restoring forest ecosystems in developing countries by valuing their carbon sequestration, storage, and other services. For example, a community could receive REDD+ funding, or training to improve yields from existing farmland, in return for avoiding the clearing of standing forests.

Conservation International works on the ground with local communities, governments, scientists, and other partners to implement REDD+ activities that effectively achieve emissions reductions — while benefiting people and protecting the forests that people, plants, and animals all depend on.

1.2M

HECTARES

To date, Conservation International’s REDD+ initiatives have cumulatively protected 1,247,800 hectares of some of the most important forests on Earth in places like Madagascar, Kenya and Peru.

Protecting forests in Peru

Despite its protected status, Peru’s Alto Mayo Protected Forest — an area of Amazonian forest twice the size of New York City — had some of the country's highest deforestation rates. To halt this cycle, Conservation International worked with partners — including local communities, corporations and Peru's government — to develop a REDD+ program. Now, 70 percent of the community in the Alto Mayo basin benefits directly from the initiative; since 2008, the program has generated more than 8.4 million metric tons of emissions reductions — the equivalent of taking nearly 150,000 cars off the road each year.