What is REDD+?

Quick Answer: REDD+ stands for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, plus additional forest-related activities that protect the climate. It is a United Nations framework, established under the UNFCCC, that pays developing countries for verified reductions in forest carbon emissions. The "+" refers to the conservation, sustainable management of forests, and enhancement of forest carbon stocks beyond simply halting deforestation.

What is REDD+?

REDD+ is a results-based climate finance mechanism that incentivises developing countries to protect and sustainably manage their forests in exchange for payments tied to measurable emissions reductions. Countries negotiated it under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) from 2005 onwards and it is formally recognised in Article 5 of the Paris Agreement.

The name breaks down as follows:

• RE = Reducing Emissions
• DD = from Deforestation and forest Degradation
• + = plus conservation, sustainable management of forests, and enhancement of forest carbon stocks

Forests absorb significant quantities of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. When they are cleared or degraded, that stored carbon is released, contributing to climate change. Globally, deforestation and forest degradation account for an estimated 10% of anthropogenic CO2 emissions (FAO, 2022). REDD+ exists to change the economics of forest use so that protecting trees is more financially viable than destroying them.

How does REDD+ work in practice?

REDD+ operates through three overlapping phases:

1. Readiness: Countries develop national strategies, policies, and monitoring systems. This includes building the technical capacity to measure, report, and verify forest carbon changes.
2. Implementation: Countries put national policies and measures into action, often supported by international finance and technical assistance.
3. Results-based payments: Once a country can demonstrate verified emissions reductions against an agreed forest reference level, it becomes eligible to receive results-based finance from public, private, bilateral, or multilateral sources.

The framework is voluntary. Each country's participation depends on its national circumstances, existing forest governance, and the level of international support it receives. As of 2025, 67 developing countries have reported REDD+ activities to the UNFCCC, with 24 of those reporting a combined reduction of over 14 billion tonnes of CO2 (UNFCCC, 2025).

What counts as a REDD+ activity?

The five recognised REDD+ activities are:

• Reducing emissions from deforestation (the complete conversion of forest to another land use)
• Reducing emissions from forest degradation (the partial loss of forest carbon without full land-use change)
• Conservation of existing forest carbon stocks
• Sustainable management of forests
• Enhancement of forest carbon stocks (for example, through reforestation)

The distinction between deforestation and degradation matters more than it appears. Deforestation is relatively straightforward to detect via satellite imagery. Degradation, the gradual thinning or damage of forest that does not cross a country's canopy-cover threshold, is far harder to measure. Research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that degradation accounts for 25-70% of all forest-related carbon emissions globally, and up to 83% in parts of the Amazon (PNAS, 2024). This means that carbon accounting systems focused only on visible land-cover change are likely to significantly undercount actual forest emissions.

Why does REDD+ matter for carbon accounting?

For companies and sustainability professionals working on carbon footprints, REDD+ is most likely to appear in two contexts: as a source of carbon credits used in voluntary offsetting, and as part of the broader policy context shaping how countries count and verify forest-related emissions.

REDD+ credits, when generated through verified projects, represent measurable reductions in forest carbon emissions. The quality of those credits depends heavily on the rigour of the underlying carbon accounting, including how well the project measures both deforestation and degradation, how it establishes a credible baseline (the forest reference level), and how the project handles and reports uncertainty in emissions estimates.

This is where REDD+ carbon accounting gets technically demanding. A 2024 survey published in Carbon Balance and Management found that while 91% of REDD+ countries reported uncertainty in activity data, only 4-14% reported uncertainty in emission factors. Most countries lack the expertise, tools, or financial resources to apply more advanced uncertainty quantification methods. That gap has direct implications for the credibility of results-based payments and the quality of any credits derived from REDD+ activities.

For businesses evaluating forest-based carbon credits, understanding these limitations is relevant. Credits from projects with transparent methodology, third-party verification, and clear reporting of uncertainty are more defensible than those without.

What is the Warsaw Framework for REDD+?

The Warsaw Framework for REDD+ (WFR), adopted at COP 19 in December 2013, provides the complete methodological and financing guidance for REDD+ implementation. It covers how countries should set forest reference emission levels, how they should measure, report, and verify results, and how countries should structure results-based payments.

The WFR requires participating countries to establish four key elements:

• A national REDD+ strategy or action plan
• A forest reference emission level (the baseline against which reductions are measured)
• A national forest monitoring system capable of measuring, reporting, and verifying forest carbon changes
• A system for providing information on how countries are addressing safeguards (social and environmental protections)

These requirements set a high bar for data quality and institutional capacity, which is why many developing countries still rely on international technical support to meet them. FAO has supported approximately 70% of REDD+ submissions to the UNFCCC (FAO, 2022).

How does REDD+ connect to voluntary carbon markets?

Beyond the UNFCCC framework, REDD+ has become one of the most common project types in voluntary carbon markets. Projects in countries such as Brazil, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Indonesia generate carbon credits verified under standards including the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS, now Verra) and the Climate, Community and Biodiversity (CCB) Standards.

The credibility of these credits has faced scrutiny in recent years, largely because of the measurement challenges described above. Projects that rely on activity data and average emission factors without accounting for degradation risk overstating the emissions reductions they have achieved. Newer monitoring approaches, including satellite-based biomass estimation and LiDAR technology, are beginning to address this by measuring carbon stock changes directly rather than inferring them from land-cover classifications.

For sustainability professionals assessing whether to use REDD+ credits as part of a broader decarbonisation strategy, the methodology behind the credit matters as much as the project narrative. At Seedling, we help companies understand where carbon credits fit within a credible, reduction-first approach, rather than treating offsetting as a substitute for cutting emissions at source.

The direction of travel in both policy and voluntary markets is towards higher-quality, better-verified forest carbon accounting. Companies that engage with REDD+ credits now need to prepare for that bar to rise.