BIOREDD+ portfolio
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Name: BIOREDD+ porfolio
Country: Colombia
USAID Operating Unit: Colombia Mission
Partners: Fondo Accion and other partners
Type of Assistance: Preparation of 8 REDD+ projects under BIOREDD+ portfolio
Period of Activity: 2011-Present
Status: Validated. Currently supporting implementation of project documents towards a first verification
Description:
In Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities, BIOREDD+ is helping to alleviate poverty and support sustainable development, and helping 18 participating communities to conserve forests and their indigenous culture.
BIOREDD+ supports the government of Colombia and forest communities turn forest conservation into an economic opportunity. The portfolio has been designed as regional development project that includes carbon assets and agricultural value chains built on non-timber forest products like acai, cacao, peach palm, coconut and annatto. These value chains are developed with private sector participation through which communities become business partners with agro industries - this generates revenue and employment opportunities for communities, in addition to income earned from carbon credits sales. The communities and private partners work with partner investment funds to access the required capital.
In developing the carbon component, the program worked with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Jet Propulsion Laboratory to establish the carbon baselines and developed a tool to track forest degradation. USAID also developed the first Development Credit Authority carbon guarantee to an investment fund as an incentive to market carbon credits. The USAID supported Stand For Trees web platform aims to support individual action to curb deforestation and combat climate change towards climate change, including by purchasing REDD+ credits.
All these efforts combined aim at providing forest communities with sustainable livelihoods with forest conservation as the core activity, while supporting Colombia in mitigating climate change.
BIOREDD+ is USAID/Colombia's flagship environmental program. The $30 million program was designed to strengthen Colombia's capacity to mitigate and adapt to climate change, protect biodiversity and support the development of remote, impoverished communities. BIOREDD+ developed 8 REDD+ projects (under the BIOREDD+ portfolio) in the Colombian Pacific - part of the Choco Biogeographic region, one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots - now validated under the Climate, Community and Biodiversity Alliance and the Verified Carbon Standard at gold level. The projects are located in four geographic nodes covering over 700,000 hectares.
BIOREDD+ resources:
Key themes: adaptation, forest/forestry, indigenous, mitigation, poverty, Reducing Emissions From Deforestation & Degradation (REDD+), sustainable landscapes