Assessing the Financial Flows for REDD+: the Pledge-Implementation Gap

Assessing the Financial Flows for REDD+: the Pledge-Implementation Gap. Major findings/implications include:

• Of the $200 million pledged for the FCPF Readiness Fund, $86.19 has been committed and $9.857 million has been spent in fiscal year 2009 and 2010, equating to an expenditure rate of 11.44%.
• Of the total $94 million that was deposited in the UN-REDD programme accounts, $26.7 million was transferred to the accounts of the country offices of the FAO, UNDP & UNEP, as of February 2011. It is unclear how much has been spent.
• Implications of low expenditure rates/transfers are that implementation of REDD+ using the FCPF and UN-REDD is unlikely to curb deforestation in the near future, whilst private sector capital inflow is – and will remain – largely absent for some time.
• Somewhat more speculatively, REDD+ does not provide as much hope for multilateralism as is often purported, and the countries that are most in need of finance risk being left behind in efforts to tackle deforestation.