Integrating Adaptation in REDD+ Projects – Potential Impacts and Social Return on Investment (SROI) in Malinau Indonesia

Women in Malinau. Photo by Eko Prianto/CIFOR

Integrating adaptation measures for people and ecosystems in REDD+ projects can render them more sustainable, ensure the permanence of carbon and increase their overall local legitimacy. However, there has been little experience and evidence to confirm this.

Bottom-up, stakeholder-driven evaluation methods can provide preliminary indications of the potential impacts that can be generated by integrating adaptation interventions in REDD+ projects and facilitate the synergistic planning of adaptation and mitigation strategies.

Using the Social Return on Investment (SROI) framework and participatory planning approaches, this research project aims to explore the costs, benefits, and overall impact of integrating community-based adaptation strategies in REDD+ target areas. One of the pilot sites is the Community Forest (Hutan Desa) project in Setulang, Malinau, managed by the FORCLIME project of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ).

The study is conducted by CIFOR and funded by the GIZ with a grant from the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).