Background

PNG has a significant area of intact tropical forest covering 77.8% of the country’s 46.9m ha of land. Together with the forest of West Papua (Island of New Guinea) they represent one of the largest areas of intact tropical forest in the world. These forests are critical to the livelihoods and economy of the country and a commercial logging industry has for a long period been a central part of the economy.

These forests, however, have been impacted by development activities linked to a rapidly growing population and efforts towards economic development. These impacts while unavoidable in some areas have been identified as being excessive in other areas and as result the Government of Papua New Guinea (GoPNG) has started efforts towards developing an approach to reducing those impacts through engagement in the mechanism for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, the Sustainable Management of Forests and the Conservation and Enhancement of Forest Carbon Stocks (REDD+) as laid out under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

With support from the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility’s (FCPF) REDD+ Readiness Funds implemented by UNDP Country Office in PNG, the GoPNG developed key elements of the Warsaw Framework on REDD+ including a Forest Reference Level (submitted to the UNFCCC in 2017) and a National REDD+ Strategy, approved by National Executive Council (NEC) under Decision 126/2017 in 2017.

Based on these documents the Climate Change and Development Authority (CCDA) with continuing support from FCPF and in partnership with other government agencies has worked to develop a REDD+ Finance and Investment Plan (RFIP) that identifies the potential costs and benefits of implementing the National REDD+ Strategy (NRS). The RFIP provides a basis for the GoPNG to make more informed policy decisions relating to the potential costs and impacts of different action areas within the NRS.

With the nature of international markets for REDD+ continuing to evolve and a need for the GoPNG to be able to both access additional international and domestic finance to support the implementation of the RFIP further support is required to increase understanding of the potential financing options available to the GoPNG and the steps and structures needed to access these, as well as to support action to access upfront finance to implement the RFIP.

Objective

Under supervision of the FCPF REDD+ Technical Advisor and overall guidance of the General Manager for REDD+ and Mitigation of the Climate Change and Development Authority, Team Leader (International) will work with the team of consultants and bear responsibility to strengthen government capacity for effective decision-making on REDD+ and increase opportunities to access climate finance. To achieve this objective the consultant team will be required to provide support in a number of areas including:

• Strengthen understanding of potential financing sources to support REDD+ in PNG;
• Strengthen the development of priority action areas within the REDD+ Finance and Investment Plan (RFIP) to increase potential access to finance for PNG;
• Identify options for REDD+ financial management structures and benefit distribution systems;
• Strengthen understanding of approaches to REDD+ development linked to the RFIP.