With the support of the UN-REDD Programme team at UNEP, the Center for People and Forests (RECOFTC) has recently released four Asia-Pacific focused reports entitled "Country Assessments on REDD+ Capacity Building Services". These assessments focus on the strengths and weaknesses of REDD+ capacity building in Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Viet Nam, and identify gaps in capacity building services, based on their REDD+ readiness needs. Full reports for the four countries (Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Viet Nam) are available to download along with an updated policy brief, to bring together the findings from across the region.

In the past three years, tropical forested countries across the world have taken important institutional, policy, legal and piloting steps to become ‘ready’ for REDD+. Capacity building is a key component of this REDD+ readiness process and is backed by a huge investment of time and money from a large number of organizations, government agencies, communities and individuals. There has been a massive increase in capacity building during this short three-year period, which begs the question:  Do the organizations providing such services have the competencies to fully meet countries’ REDD+ readiness needs?

Surprisingly, little is known about the competencies of the organizations, which include government agencies, NGOs, community groups, academic institutions, think-tanks, consultancies, legal firms, and media companies. These reports set out to fill this knowledge gap.

To get a quick overview of the assessment findings, visit the RECOFTC's blog. For further information on the assessment, please contact RECOFTC Program Officer Jim Stephenson (jim.stephenson@recoftc.org) or UNEP UN-REDD Programme Regional Coordinator Thomas Enters (thomas.enters@unep.org).