WCS is working to secure recognition for high-integrity forests’ contribution to climate change mitigation and the goals of the Paris Agreement, particularly Article 4 which calls for the world to achieve a net balance between emissions by sources and removals by sinks by 2050.
To support the implementation and impact of efforts to halt agriculture-driven deforestation, WCS has developed the Forest First approach, a new ‘risk-based’ framing for action on deforestation, that prioritizes efforts towards the farm and forests frontier. A brochure presents some case studies from WCS’s work in the field and provides some recommendations as to how producer countries can be supported to make the transition to becoming deforestation-free, whilst also involving and taking account of the impacts on local communities and smallholders. For more information, please click here.
WCS is also creating a novel instrument to incentivize conservation of high integrity tropical forests on the basis of the essential environmental services that those forests provide, including climate regulation and biodiversity conservation. The incentives are based on a new market-based, tradable certificate: the High Integrity Forest (HIFOR) Unit. This instrument complements but does not compete with existing financing instruments that credit reductions in climate-heating emissions from tropical deforestation (e.g. REDD+). For more information, please click here.
For more information about WCS’s work on forests and climate change, please click here.
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2022
UNFCCC COP27 in Egypt
NGOs statement on the EU regulation on deforestation-free products
2021
UNFCCC COP26 in Glasgow
Launch of the EU-funded project '5 Great Forests of Mesoamerica'
TFA letter on EU action on deforestation
NGOs letter on EU forest risk commodities regulation
NGOs briefing on EU legislation on deforestation and forest degradation
WCS Forest First Approach - Position Paper
WCS Forest First Approach - Case Studies and Recommendations
2020
Webinar on a ‘Forest-First Approach’
WCS EU response to the public consultation on deforestation
Webinar on Nature-based Solutions
WCS EU response to the EU Climate Pact public consultation
NGOs recommendations for EU forest partnerships
WCS EU comments on the deforestation and forest degradation roadmap
WCS EU comments on the European Climate Law roadmap
2019
NGOs briefing on protecting forests
WCS EU response to the EU consultation on deforestation and forest degradation
2018
NGOs statement on an EU Action Plan on deforestation