Financial Performance, National Programme
PROGRESS AGAINST THE WARSAW FRAMEWORK
The national REDD+ strategy of Mongolia, has been prepared together with an action plan (AP), a results framework and an impact assessment. The strategy was approved by the Ministry of Environment and Tourism in September 2019. Activities under the Mongolia UN-REDD national programme pertaining to the NFMS and FRL were completed in 2018. Mongolia provided a response to the UNFCCC FRL technical assessment report in February 2019, and the UNFCCC secretariat published the report on the UNFCCC web platform in April 2019. Following the earlier preparation of a national safeguards framework document and SIS design, an excel version of the SIS database structure has been developed with relevant indicators for potential integration into an online database hosted by the Environment Information Centre.
Challenges and Solutions
As a result of earlier delays in finalizing a national REDD+ strategy, known in Mongolia as the REDD+ national programme, a no-cost extension up to July 2019 was requested and approved by the UN-REDD Executive Board to cover the completion of the REDD+ national programme as well as the development of a narrative action plan and corresponding results template. These documents have been submitted to the Government by the national REDD+ focal point for further endorsement and institutionalization.
Gender and Social Inclusion
Building on the gender and social Inclusion report that was completed in 2018, actions were taken to ensure that gender considerations and indicators were included in the REDD+ national programme. Moreover, the Forest and Sustainable Development Council, a civil society organization forum initially supported through UN-REDD, has been officially registered as a legal entity. The FDSC played a key role providing consolidated civil society inputs into the national REDD+ processes.
Partnerships
UN-REDD collaborated with the Forest Research and Development Centre of the Ministry of Environment and GIZ on Mongolia’s first comprehensive and multi-purpose NFI, complementing an inventory of well-stocked forests supported by GIZ with information on poorly-stocked forests in 2018 through UN-REDD. The results achieved and capacities built by UN-REDD, in particular the NFMS activity data (AD), are leveraged through a GEF-Capacity-Building Initiative for Transparency project that works on enhanced transparency in AFOLU sectors, with the land agency (ALAMGC) evaluating the use of Collect Earth – a free and open source application for land monitoring developed by FAO – for a national land-use assessment.
Linkages to SDGs
The work on REDD+ contributes to SDG 15 (life on land), and specifically target 15.2 (By 2020, promote the implementation of sustainable management of all types of forests, halt deforestation, restore degraded forests and substantially increase afforestation and reforestation globally). Through REDD+, Mongolia has identified what the drivers of deforestation and forest degradation are on its territory and what policies and measures should be put into place to address those drivers, established an FRL and NFMS to track emissions reductions and to ensure that social and environmental safeguards are in place during implementation. Cumulatively, they provide the means and data to accomplish SDG 15 (life on land).
