Summary
This report on the context of REDD+ in the Lao People's Democratic Republic is a contribution by the EU-funded project "Impacts of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation and Enhancing Carbon Stocks (I-REDD+)" to Component 1 of the Global Comparative Study on REDD+ conducted by the Center for International Forestry Research (Brockhaus and Di Gregorio 2012). The aim is to provide an overview and analysis of the drivers of deforestation and forest degradation (both direct and indirect), institutional arrangements for the forestry sector in general and for REDD+ in particular, the political economy underlying the drivers of deforestation and forest degradation, and the existing legal frameworks for REDD+ and their implications for achieving effective, efficient and equitable outcomes from REDD+ in Laos (Brockhaus et al. 2012).