Submission: Opportunities, best practices, actionable solutions, challenges, and barriers relevant to the Mitigation Work Programme dialogue on “Mitigation solutions in the forests sector”

In response to the encouragement to parties, observers, and non-party stakeholders to submit their perspectives regarding the fifth global dialogue in 2025 under the Sharm el-Sheikh mitigation ambition and implementation work programme (MWP), CAN International submits its views on opportunities, best practices, actionable solutions, challenges and barriers relevant to the topics of the dialogues regarding the topic of “enabling mitigation solutions in the forest sector, drawing on national and regional experience”.

CAN International welcomes that forests are considered in this year’s dialogues for addressing the pre-2030 emissions gap. Forests play a critical role in any credible pathway to limit global warming to 1.5°C, but forests cannot compensate for delayed emissions reductions in other sectors.

CAN recommends that the conversations on forest solutions at this dialogue:

1. Are centered on protecting and restoring forest ecosystem integrity;

2. Prioritize Indigenous Peoples’ and Local Communities’ (IP&LC) land tenure and forest management, and ensure all solutions follow a human rights-based approach;

3. Adopt a holistic perspective that extends beyond a narrow focus on carbon sequestration, and addresses multiple social and environmental crises and needs;

4. Ensure equitable accountability across all forest ecosystems, covering tropical, temperate and boreal biomes;

5. Address structural pressures (including current global financial architecture) and proximate drivers of forest conversion and degradation (including commodity driven deforestation and forest management for commodity production).

6. Do not use forests to compensate or justify delayed emissions reductions in high emitting sectors;

7. Protect against market mechanisms that prioritize carbon offsets over substantive fossil fuel emissions reductions, ensuring genuine finance channels for forest protection;

8. Exclude large-scale afforestation, commercial plantations, large-scale woody biomass, and Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) as mitigation solutions.

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Download file: http://CANI-Mitigation-Work-Programme-Submission-April-2025.pdf