Biodiversity co-benefits of policies to reduce forest-carbon emissions

1 Policies for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) under development through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will financially reward developing countries that reduce forest-based carbon emissions through initiatives to decrease deforestation and forest degradation, conserve and enhance forest-carbon stocks and promote sustainable forest management1. REDD+ policies have been widely recognized for their potential to jointly address declines in forest-based carbon stores and biodiversity2. Yet, the prospect of win–win solutions has obscured the differences among prospective REDD+ policies, insulating decision-makers from difficult choices. In fact, the options for linking biodiversity conservation to proposed forestbased climate change mitigation strategies have yet to be clearly articulated3, even though they are at the heart of contemporary debates about the environment and involve transformative policies for forests across the tropics2,4–6. Based on a review of the REDD+ literature, we identify the five principal approaches to linking forest-based climate change mitigation and tropical biodiversity conservation and their related trade-offs (Table 1). This clarification7 should enable REDD+ policymakers and stakeholders to state their positions regarding the expected biodiversity outcomes of REDD+ interventions. Recent UNFCCC decisions have encouraged tropical countries to optimize additional biodiversity co-benefits1,8, the issue addressed here. UNFCCC decisions have also raised the related but distinct issue (not the focus here) of REDD+ safeguards to avoid perverse incentives or unintentional harm to biodiversity. There is now widespread recognition that REDD+ policies should safeguard against unintended consequences such as the displacement of deforestation and degradation activities into neighbouring low-carbon ecosystems that nonetheless host important biodiversity1,9,10. As with other environmental regulations, the costs associated with applying and monitoring these types of safeguard are likely to be integrated into the cost of REDD+ implementation6,11. However, REDD+ debates, including those within the UNFCCC, often reference safeguards as a catch-all term. This has led to some confusion. Following the work of others6, we Biodiversity co-benefits of policies to reduce forest-carbon emissions