Context: Recently, Uganda has become the first African country to submit results for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Key Points

• REDD+ is a mechanism developed by the parties to the UNFCCC to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.
• The results submitted by Uganda to the UNFCCC has paved the way for results-based payments to the country.
• Results-based payments comprise the final REDD+ phase. It provides financial incentives to developing countries that prove they stopped deforestation during a certain period.
• Uganda’s forest cover had depleted to 8 per cent from 24 per cent in the 1990s, largely attributed to human encroachment, including for charcoal, timber and agriculture.

Significance for Africa

• The submission of the results will encourage other African countries to reduce carbon emissions by decreasing deforestation and forest degradation.
• Achieving REDD+ results in the continent is challenging, as there are other development priorities — with agriculture, mining, energy and forestry — driving deforestation.
• Africa had the greatest annual rate of net forest loss, at 3.9 million ha, across the world in this decade.
• It is a climate change mitigation solution developed by Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), that incentivizes developing countries to keep their forests standing.

About UN-REDD Programme

• United Nations Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation is a collaborative programme of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), created in 2008 in response to the UNFCCC decisions on the Bali Action Plan and REDD at COP-13.
• The Programme supports nationally led REDD+ processes and promotes the indigenous peoples and other forest-dependent communities, in national and international REDD+ implementation.
• It releases an annual Programme Progress Report and a Semi-Annual Report in the public domain.

Goal

• The overall development goal of the Programme is to reduce forest emissions and enhance carbon stocks in forests while contributing to national sustainable development.

Difference between REDD+ and the UN-REDD Programme

• REDD refers to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation while REDD+ refers to the conservation of forest carbon stocks, sustainable management of forests, and enhancement of forest carbon stocks.
• REDD+ is a voluntary climate change mitigation approach that has been developed by Parties to the UNFCCC.

About Uganda

• Uganda is a landlocked country in East-Central Africa.
• It is in the African Great Lakes region. Uganda also lies within the Nile basin, and has a varied but generally a modified equatorial climate.
• It is bordered to the east by Kenya, to the north by South Sudan, to the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the south-west by Rwanda, and to the south by Tanzania.
• The southern part of the country includes a substantial portion of Lake Victoria, shared with Kenya and Tanzania.