The proposed mechanism for Reducing Emissions
from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) offers
significant potential for conserving forests to reduce
negative impacts of climate change. Tanzania is one of
nine pilot countries for the United Nations REDD Programme,
receives significant funding from the Norwegian,
Finnish and German governments and is a participant in
the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility. In
combination, these interventions aim to mitigate greenhouse
gas emissions, provide an income to rural communities
and conserve biodiversity. The establishment of the
UN-REDD Programme in Tanzania illustrates real-world
challenges in a developing country. These include currently
inadequate baseline forestry data sets (needed to calculate
reference emission levels), inadequate government capacity
and insufficient experience of implementing REDD+-type
measures at operational levels. Additionally, for REDD+ to
succeed, current users of forest resources must adopt new
practices, including the equitable sharing of benefits that
accrue from REDD+ implementation. These challenges
are being addressed by combined donor support to implement
a national forest inventory, remote sensing of
forest cover, enhanced capacity for measuring, reporting
and verification, and pilot projects to test REDD+ implementation
linked to the existing Participatory Forest Management
Programme. Our conclusion is that even in a
country with considerable donor support, progressive forest
policies, laws and regulations, an extensive network of
managed forests and increasingly developed locally-based
forest management approaches, implementing REDD+ presents
many challenges. These are being met by coordinated,
genuine partnerships between government, non-government
and community-based agencies.