Emily Fripp of Efeca and Cecilia Luttrell of CIFOR co-authored a paper looking at lessons that have been learnt from Voluntary Partnership Agreements (VPA) that could of value to REDD+ benefit sharing.
Developed under the umbrella of the European Union (EU) Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Action Plan, a VPA is a performance-based mechanism designed to build credibility for buyers of legal timber. It offers several lessons on how to design benefit-sharing mechanisms under REDD+ so that they build credibility and trust among the potential recipients of REDD+ benefits and wider REDD+ stakeholders. In particular, focus was given to learning lessons for three specific design aspects of REDD+ benefit-sharing mechanisms:
(i) the balance between state and non-state actors in the architecture of benefit-sharing mechanism institutions;
(ii) the role of civil society organizations (CSOs) in monitoring; and
(iii) the design of multistakeholder processes
The paper can be downloaded from the CIFOR website: CIFOR paper: Lessons from voluntary partnership agreement for REDD+ benefit sharing