Designing REDD activities to mitigate climate change

The Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center (CATIE), the World Bank, the German Association for Technical Cooperation (GTZ) and the Katoomba Group are pleased to announce a joint-international course: Designing REDD Activities to Mitigate Climate Change. The five-day workshop will be held at CATIE in Turrialba, Costa Rica from October 27th to 31st.

The course will address the science of climate change mitigation through forests, analyze policy approaches to REDD currently discussed by the international community, and present recently developed methodologies, validation and verification standards and voluntary REDD initiatives. Case studies will be presented for national and project based activities, and the participants will benefit from interactive discussion with international experts.

The first few days will provide a background on deforestation, the political context and scientific bases of REDD, standards and guidance documents for the development of REDD activities, and a session on forest biomass measurement. There will be presentations on REDD initiatives by the course organizers as well as discussion of World Bank initiatives such as the BioCarbon Fund, Forest Carbon Partnership Facility, and Forest Investment Program.

The second portion of the workshop will focus on REDD project design and methodology. On the final day, the Katoomba Ecosystem Services Incubator will lead a REDD project clinic to provide targeted technical, legal and business input into projects that are currently in the design phase.

Projects that are interested in receiving consultation from the Incubator during this clinic are invited to submit an application to Jacob Olander (jolander(at)interactive.net.ec) by 10th October, 2008. Application forms are available here.

To learn more about the course, please contact Zenia Salinas at zsalinas(at)catie.ac.cr or visit http://www.catie.ac.cr.

To learn more about the Katoomba Ecosystem Services Incubator, please see http://www.katoombagroup.org/regions/tropicalAmerica/initiative_incubator.php.