REDD+ Site News: Issue #1

Welcome to the  first redd-plus.com site update!  This post was sent out as a newsletter to all registered users a couple of days ago, but the information in it is so important that we wanted to share it with all of our visitors.

We are really excited about our new website and even more excited about what's happening in the world of REDD+.  We would like to thank those who have taken the time to register at the site and also to the many others who have visited. It's still very much early days for REDD+, both the idea and the site.

We launched the website in late November 2009, just a couple of weeks before the COP15 Conference in Copenhagen.  That makes us just shy of five months old. In that time, we've received thousands of visitors from, believe it or not, 129 countries and territories. We've also made consistent progress up the Google search results and have drawn attention from organizations like UN-REDD, which named us their "Blog of the Month" for March. (By the way, UN-REDD is also featuring an article of mine, "UN-REDD National Programmes - Where to Begin?," in their just released newsletter, which I hope you'll find time to read).

In the last few months, besides keeping track of, and writing about, what's been going on in the world of REDD+, we've been developing new features for our registered users. I'd like to highlight some of these below and thereby encourage those of you who have not yet done so to register today.

REDDAlerts

REDDAlerts® are a brand new way for users to share information and thinking about REDD+. They're status updates, which will be a familiar concept to users of Facebook, Twitter and some other social networking sites. With REDDAlerts, in 139 characters or less, you can express your REDD-related thoughts to fellow users and visitors.  By using the '#' symbol to create something called a 'hashtag' (e.g., #indonesia, #unredd, #reddwork, #biodiversity, etc.), you can make your REDDAlerts easily searchable and find other users who are updating on related issues. And by linking to your Twitter account, your REDDAlert can be posted to Twitter, automatically.  Sound your first REDDAlert today!

Country and Thematic Networks

Country and thematic networks are designed to bring together users who have a common interest in specific geographic or thematic aspects of REDD. So far, 13 country networks (Bolivia, Brazil, Democractic Republic of Congo, Guyana, Indonesia, Madagascar, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Panama, Paraguay, Tanzania, Viet Nam and Zambia) and 3 thematic networks (REDD and Biodiversity, REDD and the Private Sector and REDD and Forest-dependent communities) have been established. You can join new groups by going to the relevant group's home page from the main groups page, links to which are found on the primary and navigation menus. Joining a group opens up several possibilities. You can receive e-mail notifications anytime there are posts to the group.  You can post to the Group blog on issues related to the Group topics. You can see who else has joined the group and view their profiles. And you can send an e-mail to any group member without exchanging e-mails addresses (just use the contact tab on their profile).

User contributions

Let's make one thing clear: www.redd-plus.com is not my blog. Let me repeat: www.redd-plus.com is not my blog. It's a REDD+ community, with a potentially unlimited number of blogs and other sources of ideas and innovations on REDD+. Many of you have indicated, at the time of registration, your interest in contributing to the site. Perhaps you'd like to share something about your organization's latest REDD-related initiative? Maybe you've just read a report that you found really interesting and would like to share your thoughts? Or maybe you've just returned from a site visit to the Amazon, where you're helping to develop a proposal for certification by the CCAB? (This one we definitely want to hear about!) Let us know by adding a comment, posting a REDDAlert, or contributing to a group blog. Think of it as a pot luck dinner and redd-plus.com is asking you to bring whatever you've got and add it to our REDD+ global knowledge stew. One of our next tasks will be to add a photo gallery, so that pictures can begin to complement our words.

 ***

Well, that's about it for now. In the coming weeks, we will continue to focus on the world of REDD+ -- including the Oslo portion of the Paris-Oslo process, a first look at the new climate legislation proposal about to be put forward in the US Senate and looks at REDD+ in the Philippines and Congo Basin -- while building up momentum within our own REDD+ community and hopefully coming up with some cool new features. With your help, we expect to make redd-plus.com a focal point for global thinking and exchange about REDD+. 

Hoping to see you registered and posting on the site soon,

Chris