December 2009: The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has published a working paper, authored by Katia Karousakis, on promoting biodiversity co-benefits with reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries (REDD).
The paper discusses potential biodiversity implications of different REDD design options that have been put forward in the international climate change negotiations and examines how the creation of additional biodiversity-specific incentives could be used to complement a REDD mechanism, so as to target biodiversity benefits directly.
The author formulates suggestions on how biodiversity co-benefits can be mainstreamed into REDD activities, including by investing some international financing in economically evaluating and geographically mapping biodiversity and ecosystem services benefits, to increase the likelihood of using this information to maximize REDD co-benefits. She states that a REDD mechanism could free up financial biodiversity resources from areas where high carbon and high biodiversity benefits coincide, thus allowing for biodiversity-targeted funding to be focused on areas with high biodiversity and low carbon benefits. [OECD Working Paper No. 11]