By Tiina Vähänen, Deputy Director of the Forestry Division, FAO, and Karin Takeuchi, Head of Office ad interim, FAO Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea (PNG) boasts a remarkable forest cover of 78% – one of the highest rates in the world – and more than 5% of the world’s biodiversity. It’s also a net-zero emitter, thanks to all the carbon its vast forests sequester. Together with the Indonesian-governed western half of New Guinea, it is also home to the world’s third-largest tropical forest after the Amazon and Congo basins.

Papua New Guinea has long depended on timber and minerals for its economy and on subsistence farming for the livelihoods of much of the population. But the nation’s vulnerability to the impacts of climate change, such as rising sea levels and increasingly damaging fires, storms, floods, and landslides is growing.

For this reason, Papua New Guinea has been a leading voice for two decades in the global debate on climate change. It was this small island State that, together with Costa Rica, first proposed in 2005 the notion of a global process that would reward developing countries for taking action to halt deforestation, and it has now become the latest recipient of such a result-based payment.

Globally, deforestation and forest degradation account for around 11% of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, contributing to climate change. Healthy forests, on the other hand, store carbon and can therefore help fight global warming, making them key to achieving the SDGs.

Yet, an estimated 420 million hectares of forests were lost through deforestation worldwide between 1990 and 2020. And deforestation especially impacts tropical forests rich in unique biodiversity.

Land is often perceived to be more valuable without, rather than with, standing forests.

The Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation plus  (REDD+) process under the UNFCCC aims to address this, encouraging and rewarding developing countries for their efforts to halt deforestation and conserve more forests.

Countries need to submit data to show that deforestation – and therefore emissions – has been reduced, and when the data are verified, they can earn what are known as results-based payments.

Meeting REDD+ and more broadly results-based finance requirements necessitates continuous concerted and consistent efforts. What needs to be done ranges from boosting and updating national strategies, linking the actions to national climate targets and achieving substantive and sustainable results, strengthening national forest monitoring systems to ensure that results can be demonstrated and verified, and putting safeguards systems in place. Active and full engagement of all stakeholders needs to be ensured, including women, Indigenous Peoples, and local communities.

With support from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) and the UN-REDD Programme, among others, in navigating the process since 2011, Papua New Guinea became this month the first small island developing State (SIDS) in the world, and only the second country in Asia and the Pacific after Indonesia, to receive a REDD+ results-based payment from the Green Climate Fund (GCF) – a multinational fund established by the UNFCCC.

It is a mighty achievement, and a satisfying outcome for a country that kickstarted the REDD+ policy approach all those years ago.

The USD 63.4 million in funds received will go towards continuing to tackle the complex reality of what is involved in halting forest loss in Papua New Guinea.

Simply mapping the country’s forests – spread over some of the most varied terrain in the world, with impassable mountains, deep ravines, and thick jungle – is a huge task.

To ensure the continued success, sustainability, and social benefits of the process, the people who hold the rights to almost all the country’s land must be fully engaged and at the center of decisions and actions. Most are subsistence farmers, who live in small communities that are often isolated from each other by the country’s extraordinary geography. Communicating and working with the over 800 different languages spoken across the country is a logistical and linguistic challenge that needs to be fully embedded in plans.

Changing resource use towards a more sustainable model is another massive undertaking. It involves developing legislation, regulations, policies, and strategies as well as informing and supporting communities to change their land-management practices and gain new skills.

Under plans drawn up with FAO’s support in consultation with the Climate Change and Development Authority of the Papua New Guinea government and other stakeholders, the country will invest 40% of the REDD+ payment in further strengthening governance and the remaining 60% directly into activities and communities on the ground.

It’s an important reward for what has been a long journey, but it may not be the last.

The announced payment is only for emissions reduction of 17 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent from 2014 to 2016, and Papua New Guinea is now gearing up to submit a claim for more recent periods. Potentially, the country could receive a steady stream of results-based payments for many years to accelerate its transition to a sustainable economy and conserve even more forests.

It is proof that, with the right mechanism in place, countries can receive support for their efforts to reduce their environmental footprints. And it shows funders that targeted interventions can accelerate climate action and conserve biodiversity while building resilience and supporting economic development.