Key Lessons from the Guyana-Norway Partnership
The Guyana-Norway partnership specifically aims to “provide a scaleable, replicable model for
REDD+”. From its earliest inception, it was designed as a test-bed for broader international efforts to
create a REDD+ mechanism as part of an international climate agreement.
After three years in operation, the partnership is enabling governments, international financial
institutions (IFIs) and non-governmental organsiations (NGOs) to learn key lessons. It is hoped that
these can be of value to wider global efforts to advance the REDD+ agenda within the negotiations
at the UNFCCC and elsewhere.
Lesson 1: A national scale REDD+ strategy can work. To date across the world, most REDD+
activities have been carried out as pilot schemes or on a small-scale within forest countries. While
valuable, these activities do not enable countries to address either climate or development
objectives at the scale, or in the timeframe, required to change the deforestation trends that are
causing global deforestation and forest degradation. Small-scale action can lead to deforestation and
forest degradation being halted or slowed in the area the project is focussed on, but it can continue
or increase in other parts of the country. The Guyana-Norway partnership is one of only two only
functioning “jurisdiction-wide” interim REDD+ mechanisms in the world (the other being Brazil’s
Amazon Fund), and both are demonstrating that large areas of forest can be effectively maintained
without blocking long term social and economic development. It is to be hoped that this can provide
assistance to the other forest countries of the world, including the other six countries of the
Amazon, which is by far the world’s largest climate regulator.
Lesson 2: It is important that REDD+ provides sufficient economic incentives. Shifting to a low
carbon development trajectory and putting in place the long-term incentives to remove pressure on
forests (such as supporting low carbon alternative livelihoods, clean energy to expand non extractive
sectors, the advancement of property and other rights) is expensive and takes time. REDD+ must
provide forest countries with a degree of certainty that if the country invests heavily in changing its
development model, sufficient long-term economic incentives will be in place. While the US$250
million of the Guyana-Norway deal provides Norway (as a proxy for the wider world) with one of the
cheapest forms of climate mitigation available, at the same time, it also provides Guyana with a
dependable source of capital to invest in expensive social and economic low carbon priorities. This is
in contrast with the normal REDD+ approach, which involves relatively small amounts of economic
incentives despite the targeted climate mitigation outcome.
Lesson 3: Funding for REDD+ can drive wider low carbon development. In the early days of the
Guyana-Norway partnership, there was criticism that some of its scope was “outside the forest” –
for example, through the creation of low carbon jobs in urban centres, or investment in clean energy
for citizens who live outside, as well as inside, the forest. However, the partnership is demonstrating
that a balance of low carbon investment is needed. This is for a variety of reasons – including (i) the
reality that in countries where natural resources cover over 85% of territory, all citizens have the
right to benefit in some way from those resources; (ii) the key obstacle to the development of
Guyana’s priority economic sectors is the absence of affordable energy, and without this the nonextractive sectors will continue to not be enabled to maximise their potential; (iii) the dominant view
of stakeholders in Guyana was that benefits from REDD+ should be for the benefit of all the people
of the country. As a result, Guyana’s REDD+ payments – alongside significant domestic resources –
have created the capital to invest in Guyana’s Low Carbon Development Strategy(LCDS), including
clean energy for all (renewable energy on the grid; 11,000 solar panels for Amerindian households),
an Amerindian Development Fund for all of Guyana’s indigenous villages, addressing all outstanding
land titling requests, supporting low carbon development for the urban poor, investing in a once-ina-generation upgrade to Guyana’s adaptation infrastructure, as well as developing enabling
capabilities such as the MRVS that make the Guyana-Norway partnership possible.
Lesson 4: Stakeholder engagement and participation is key, but stakeholders want to see progress
and not be “endlessly consulted”. Guyana’s initial consultation on the LCDS was one of the largest
consultations of its type anywhere in the world, involving about 10% of the country’s population.
Since then, Guyana’s innovative Multi-Stakeholder Steering Committee (MSSC) has met monthly to
oversee the LCDS and the Guyana-Norway partnership – the MSSC brings together a diverse group of
stakeholders from Government, local and international non-governmental Organisations (NGOs) and
the private sector including forest users. There have also been extensive consultations on individual
components of the LCDS (for example, during the design of the Amerindian Development Fund). All
consultations have been carried out in accordance with Guyanese law and the operational
procedures of partner entities (UNDP, in the case of the Amerindian Development Fund). This has
led to an overall level of awareness about the LCDS and the Guyana-Norway partnership that is quite
high – but consultation is also sometimes viewed with suspicion in the absence of flowing resources
(see Lesson 6 on the GRIF finance mechanism). Political support is also crucial, and there are
challenges when individual projects become politicised within a democratic set-up where the
Government has a minority in the National Assembly.
Lesson 5: A REDD+ strategy can be implemented while an MRVS is being developed and
strengthened. The dominant view internationally is that REDD+ can only be implemented after a
period of “REDD+ readiness” during which all enabling capabilities are put in place. However, in
Guyana, both readiness and implementation proceeded in parallel – where payments are made
based on “good enough” proxy MRV measurements as well as specified non-carbon performance
until such time as full MRVS is in place. This was essential to sustain public support for the GuyanaNorway partnership - if REDD+ was merely a technical matter, then there would have been limited
public engagement. It was also essential for Guyana and Norway to learn lessons, for example on
forest degradation where there was very limited international guidance, Guyana and Norway are
learning specific, detailed lessons that are of benefit to the world.
Lesson 6: To be effective, REDD+ finance must be accessible, flexible and timely. The Guyana
REDD+ Investment Fund (GRIF) was built using traditional approaches for ODA mechanisms. In the
early years, the lack of agility within the instrument created a reality where REDD+ was perceived as
a cost, but no benefits were flowing – by contrast with, for example, gold mining, where significant
reward is available through highly effective financial mechanisms (the global gold market). Guyana
and Norway quickly recognised the need for GRIF reform, stating that the GRIF was not “fit for
purpose” and the two countries persevered to the point where reforms are now being implemented.
These reforms highlight the importance of deploying the right mix of financial tools, and aligning
international bureaucracies to make REDD+ finance attractive. However, this has taken nearly three
years – and other countries may not be able to hold off competing societal and economic pressures
to create the space to make the finance mechanism work. If REDD+ is to have the kind of impact it
needs on the planet’s climate, functioning finance mechanisms will be critical to movement at the
speed needed. It is to be hoped that the experience of the Guyana-Norway partnership, and the ongoing reforms, will be of benefit to the international community in designing a post-2015 REDD+
mechanism within the new UNFCCC global agreement.
Lesson 7: Adherence to international standards and safeguards is essential for international
recognition, but there are few existing “toolboxes” to do this internationally. Guyana was one of
the first forest countries in the world to call for the use of international safeguards in REDD+ providing these safeguards were designed properly, and in consultation with the communities and
countries involved. To date, there is no operational international guidance on safeguards for REDD+,
simply a series of guiding principles. To seek a way forward, Guyana and Norway agreed a set of
proxies which have enable the Guyana-Norway partnership to operate, and it is hoped that these
will provide useful input to the broader international safeguard debate. The process of monitoring
these proxies proved difficult in the early years – by contrast with carbon proxies, assessment is not
empirical. However, by the fourth year, Guyana and Norway were getting closer to a steady state
monitoring of safeguard proxies, where Guyana produces a self assessment across mutually agreed
areas (engaging professionals, in this case PwC, to help prepare the self assessment), and the self
assessment is then both publicly reviewed and independently assessed.