CHALLENGE

A benefit-sharing mechanism among relevant stakeholders defines who will receive benefits, in what form they will be received (i.e., monetary or non-monetary benefits) and when they will be received. Establishing well-functioning mechanisms is important for providing effective incentives to participants for undertaking - or refraining from - specified actions. In other words, benefit-sharing mechanisms fundamentally determine how stakeholders contribute to resource management; sustainability; and the way desirable development outcomes are generated, distributed and reinvested. While establishing effective and equitable benefit-sharing mechanisms in the forest sector is clearly important, it has been a severe challenge in many countries, especially in those countries that lack the institutional and legal foundation to secure land, forest and carbon rights, or who fail to identify and provide proper incentives for sustainable forest management.

APPROACH

The major objective of this activity is to develop country roadmaps for benefit-sharing arrangements using PROFOR’s Options Assessment Framework, which employs a participatory approach to analyze and improve benefit-sharing arrangements. This technical assistance initially aimed to target three countries in Latin America, Africa and East Asia. 

RESULTS

The activity was successfully developed and implemented in close cooperation with CONAFOR, the key agency responsible for overseeing the REDD+ program in Mexico. Key milestones achieved include:

- Preparing and revising the initial country background report to accommodate comments from the World Bank, the PROFOR team and CONAFOR; 

- Adapting the PROFOR tool to fit the context of Mexico's REDD+ progress and focus;

- Hosting a webinar in order to receive feedback on the content of the country report; 

- Revising the country background report to accommodate comments from the webinar from actors involved in the REDD+ process in Mexico, such as federal and state government, NGOs, and academia;

- Holding a regional workshop focused on the core scoring exercise of the tool. The workshop took place in Merida, Yucatan, Mexico given its status as an Early REDD+ Action Area. The national workshop in Mexico City, Mexico then discussed, validated and refined the results from the regional workshop, with a policy-oriented angle. The project was later presented as a forum session at the World Forestry Congress in Durban in September 2015.

The activity as a whole is a roadmap to guide Mexico in the establishment of an appropriate benefit sharing mechanism for REDD+. Please see the final project report at left for details. 

In parallel, Uganda is being explored as a possible second country.