Further details from 11 March Paris conference

The Chair's Summary from the "International Conference on the Major Forest Basins", held earlier this month in Paris, has recently been placed online. Some interesting facts are to be found in this one-pager, which is particularly helpful for identifying which countries are playing what roles in developing the emerging REDD regime:

• Fifty-four countries altogether were represented at the Paris Conference.
• New donors -- Germany, Slovenia, Spain and the European Community -- joined donors who had announced support at  Copenhagen (Australia, France, Japan, Norway, United Kingdom and United States). It is unclear from the statement whether these four new donors are solely responsible for the $1 billion increase in total REDD pledges for 2010-2012 or whether the initial donors also upped their contributions.
• The statement notes that "Many donor countries intend to devote at least 20% of their fast-start funding pledges under the Copenhagen agreement to REDD+."  To put this in context: fast start pledges total some $30 billion, 20% of which is...$6 billion.  Total pledges to date for REDD are approximately $4.5 billion. We may therefore be looking at roughly $6 billion for REDD during the 2010-2012 period. Not bad...
• All potential donors are invited to confirm their contributions by the time of the follow-up Oslo Conference in May.
• The "REDD+ Partnership," as it is referred to here, is to be driven by a "facilitating group of active countries, open to all interested..."  Volunteers so far are: Australia, Brazil, Colombia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, France, Gabon, Ghana, Norway, Papua New Guinea and the United States. 
• A 'light secretariat' will be established, "in charge of identifying the most urgent needs, financial flows, existing actions and available resources."  Australia, France and Papua New Guinea all "offered their contributions."