The concept of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) and its framing of forest protection as a climate mitigation approach mark a clear paradigm shift – after decades of up-front financing of traditional ODA projects REDD+ follows the logic of ex-post payments fo...

Norway – a small northern country with only 5 million inhabitants – is at present a global leader in REDD+ financing. In this paper, we explain why and how this happened by telling the story about the emergence of Norway’s International Climate and Forest Initiative (NICFI) in 2007...

In May 2014, Nancy Birdsall, William Savedoff, and Frances Seymour visited Brazil as part of a three-country study to gain insights into the value of future expansion of performance-based payments in other countries. This brief is based on discussions with government officials, NGO staff, private en...

In this speech delivered at the 2012 Annual Conference of the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation, Nancy Birdsall shares her observations about the changing development space and offers three proposals to help the development community tap the potential for informed and...