Key issues in Evaluating Carbon Sequestration From Avoided Deforestation

1. Key issues in Evaluating Carbon Sequestration From Avoided Deforestation Aaron Zazueta, Senior Evaluation Officer, GEF American Evaluation Association Session on Climate Change and avoided Deforestation: Challenges for Evaluation November 13, 2009

2. Critical Challenges • Evaluating initiatives such as REDD include many of the old challenges evaluators have confronted but it also include new challenges. • Paymentfor additional services, not ODA • Shift from assessing outcomes to assessing permanence of outcomes • More attention to the interface between systems boundaries - “leakages” / geographical levels • Tools to deal with an increasingly uncertain context. • There is a need to expand the knowledge base required for global environmental evaluation.

3. Three critical evaluation realms in deforestation I • Is the national policy and institutional context ready? Are trustworthy institutions in place? • Are the critical preconditions for investment in place? • Effective governance and rule of law • Instruments to address intersectoral linkages • Knowledge base and critical capacities • Benefit sharing systems • Is a trustworthy risk assessment system in place • Currently a weakness: ODA routinely underplays risks • Need to learn from business approaches to risk assessment and tracking.

4. Three critical evaluation realms in deforestation II 2. Extent to which projects or contracts deliver the “services”? Given the likely long term nature of these engagements evaluation is likely be used to verify the extent to which services are delivered. These will require: • Reliable baselines • Reliable monitoring system that • Verifies that outputs (carbon ) are delivered • Report on likelihood of materialization of risks • Clear attribution and measuring additionality • Assessment of with / with out scenarios • Examination of contextual changes– influences of climate change on forest capacity to capture carbon. • Effects on forests out side the target geographical area

5. Three critical evaluation questions for avoided deforestation II But baselines, monitoring and attribution are frequently weak in projects addressing global environment. There is a need to: • Strengthen the knowledge base: forest quality, comparability of carbon absorption capacity of forests, intersectoral linkages affecting forest management, understanding of climate change effects in forests, etc • Develop cost effective baseline and monitoring techniques How to measure additionality? • With or with out scenarios

6. Three critical evaluation realms in deforestation III • The effectiveness of global governance arrangements (interface with the wider context). Robust global governance is a key complement to enabling national policy frameworks and effective delivery at the country level. Key issues to assess are: • Extent to which countries comply to declining caps. • Effectiveness of international instruments to prevent “leakages” • Preventing that protection of forest in one area leads to deterioration of forests in other areas( • For example adoption and compliance of agreements that ban illegal wood trade.

7. Conclusion • Evaluating avoided deforestation include old and new challenges. New challenges include evaluation of: • Additional services, not ODA • Permanence of outcomes • The interface between systems boundaries - “leakages” / geographical levels • An increasingly uncertain context. • A poor knowledge base to evaluate global environmental issues.

8. THANK YOU Azazueta@thegef.org www.gefeo.org