Efforts to preserve rainforests were high on the agenda at the latest United Nations climate conference, held at the edge of the Amazon. The journey of a UN-backed scheme to prevent deforestation through carbon payments and offsets exposes the challenges of influencing climate-related practices from afar. In 2013, two years ahead of the historic Paris climate agreement, countries met in Poland and agreed on the Warsaw Framework for REDD+, a United Nations-backed framework to “reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation”. The plan set rules to help countries implement programmes to monitor deforestation, providing technical assistance to assess emissions, verify, report and develop social and environmental safeguards. The Warsaw agreement integrated elements of earlier initiatives, namely the UN-REDD programme, a partnership to assist developing countries on these issues. Under the REDD+ framework, developed countries can provide publicly-sourced results-based ...
