Financial Performance, National Programme
NS/AP
The country already has a national strategy for REDD+, known as the National Strategy on Climate Change and Vegetation Resources (ENCCRV). In 2018, advances were made to develop integrated systems to underpin and monitor its implementation. Terms of reference and a methodological approach for a system to monitor the co-benefits of the ENCCRV were developed. Plans for the system were reviewed following different requests on the reporting of non-carbon benefits, i.e. from UNFCCC and the GCF. The objective of this activity was to enable the piloting of actions that ensure the coherence of the ENCCRV with UNFC CC requisites, on the one hand, and the preparation of emission reports, emission reductions and carbon absorption, based on the UNFCCC guidelines, on the other.
FREL/FRL
Chile submitted its first subnational FREL/FRL in January 2016. In 2018, UN-REDD provided technical support to ensure data coherence based on UNFCCC requirements, the preparation of emission reports, emission reductions and absorption and strengthening of the technical capacities of the MRV team of the Climate Change and Environmental Services Unit/National Forestry Corporation (UCCSA/CONAF). This support established the foundations for ensuring better data quality and capacity for future updates and territorial expansions of the current FREL/ FRL. In addition, UN-REDD supported technical analysis, in line with IPCC criteria, to estimate the precision of landuse and land-change maps (2013/2017) for the regions indicated in the REDD+ Results Annex for Chile. The preliminary analysis facilitated the finalization of Chile’s first REDD+ Results Annex.
NFMS
Chile does not have an NFMS. As such, the UN-REDD national programme in Chile has been instrumental in supporting the integration of existing monitoring systems and in promoting consistency between the evaluation of the forest resources native to Chile, the National Greenhouse Gas Inventory (INGEI) and the NFI and the Inventory of Wood Energy. During 2018, the ENCCRV Monitoring and Measuring System (SMM) was published. This document describes the agreements and institutional roles pertaining to the development of base information for preparing biennial technical reports. Work is currently under way to ensure that these agreements are legally binding so that the reports can be produced on a permanent basis. In October 2018, the technical annex for the REDD+ results was appended to Chile’s BUR on climate change.
SIS
With UN-REDD support, Chile made important advances during 2018 on the development of an SIS, including an initial proposal for the system design, which will be piloted in 2019. Advances were also made in collecting safeguard information at the project scale. These experiences are feeding into the development of protocols for collecting information on safeguards, protocols that are sufficiently broad yet also flexible enough to cover (existing and new) relevant safeguards.
UN-REDD also provided support for designing and implementing Chile’s National Safeguard System. In 2018, Chile further revised the design of the system and identified the sources of information and procedures required to verify and address the safeguards. A final version of the SIS is expected in 2019. During 2018, Chile also submitted to UNFCCC its first summary on compliance with the safeguards and completed the Environmental and Social Management Framework (MGAS).
REDD+ Implementation
With UN-REDD support, new forest management models are being tested using different resources and considering a wide array of social, cultural and economic situations, adopting a participatory and gender-inclusive approach. Ecological restoration projects are being piloted in Cerro Blanco, Penablanca and the Andes regions, a sustainable forest management programme is being tested in the farming community of Villa Alhué, and an adaptation project looking at reducing social and environmental vulnerabilities in indigenous communities is being undertaken on a fully participatory basis. Through these efforts, Chile is testing a variety of approaches in different landscapes and social contexts to further inform REDD+ implementation moving forward.
Challenges and Solutions
In order to achieve success at the national level and to prioritize REDD+ actions, transparency, participation and the socialization of this process were key factors in defining areas for investment, and at the same time, served as a basis for the ENCCRV prioritization tool. Chile dedicated specific efforts in 2018 to ensuring: the active participation of indigenous peoples and the promotion of their rights in the Early Implementation Projects; support to ensure that safeguards frame activity implementation; and the incorporation of women’s traditional activities into the ecological restoration process.
Gender and Social Inclusion
In Cerro Blanco, Chile has been supporting the participation of women farmers in ecological restoration activities. A group of 20 women from the Ovalle community were trained in ecological restoration activities not traditionally undertaken by women. These women were included in the project formulation and design and were offered a flexible schedule during the implementation phase to enable them to participate alongside their traditional community responsibilities.
Based on these early successes, UNREDD technical support focuses on replicating these experiences in other parts of the country, providing financial incentives through payments for environmental services and developing proposals to update the annual workplans for the regions, with the objective of ensuring budget allocation for gender-related activities.
Safeguarding and compliance with indigenous traditional and ancestral knowledge, integration of community interests and respect for their rights have been central elements of the UN-REDD national programme to date. During 2018, social inclusion efforts focused on safeguarding and ensuring compliance with the rights of Chile’s indigenous communities. With UN-REDD support, a participatory process resulted in the inclusion of all the elements prioritized by indigenous communities in the diagnostic phases, formulation and implementation of the actions in the territories concerned. The process incorporated their ‘cosmovision’ of the territories based on the balance of people, animals, nature, energies, material and spiritual elements, both tangible and non-tangible.
UN-REDD support has also strengthened the technical knowledge of communities on the following issues: restoration and native forest management, forest fire management, effects of climate change, necessary actions for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions, and the risks and opportunities presented by climate change at the local level.
Partnerships
In the future, the ENCCRV will be the basis for implementing REDD+ activities in Chile and is already providing input for institutional discussions on the continuity or modification of the legislation and programmatic sectoral activities associated with forests that could be implemented in the future.
Linkages to SDGs
The ENCCRV is a key tool for accomplishing SDGs 13 and 15. In the country’s development context, the ENCCRV also has positive effects on SDG 6 (availability of water and its sustainable management), SDG 8 (inclusive sustainable economic and productive employment for all) and SDG 12 (sustainable consumption and production).
