At the United Nations climate negotiations in Copenhagen on December 2009, the international community reinforced its commitment to tackle emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. In order to provide preliminary insights into what will be needed to make REDD+ work on the ground, here we analyze the experiences of 12 pilot forest carbon initiatives in which Conservation International (CI) has been involved as a partner.

Located in nine countries throughout Asia, Latin America and Africa, these initiatives represent a broad range of geographic, socioeconomic and biophysical conditions and provide a unique opportunity to examine the challenges and opportunities of designing and implementing forest carbon initiatives in different contexts.

By providing a holistic and fine-scale analysis of our experiences in implementing reforestation and REDD+ initiatives on the ground, our study reveals many of the real-world challenges that project managers and policy makers will likely face as they design and implement new REDD+ initiatives, and provides practical recommendations of how to enhance the chances of successful design and implementation in the field that result in the provision of climate, community and biodiversity benefits.