Many developing countries have started preparing for REDD+, including by setting goals for multiple benefits. These goals will need to be informed by the Cancun safeguards that address a number of social and environmental issues; but in planning for multiple benefits from REDD+, countries will also need to identify and balance preferred options according to their context-specific priorities and needs. Spatial analyses of the relation between biomass carbon stocks, biodiversity, land use designations and pressures on forests can help to understand potential benefits and risks from REDD+, and thus to evaluate possible REDD+ actions and identify preferred options. Here we present selected results of spatial analyses to explore biodiversity benefits and risks from REDD+ in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). 

Our results confirm that there is great potential to realise benefits for biodiversity from REDD+ in the DRC. Areas that store large amounts of biomass carbon overlap with the occurrence ranges of great apes and Important Bird Areas. Effective and sustainable management of existing land designations, such as protected areas, forest and mining concessions, will be important to reduce environmental harm and secure the valuable assets they contain. The locations of recent forest cover loss show the link between forest roads and deforestation, and help identify where continued deforestation is more likely to happen. These spatial analyses will help ensure that REDD+ implementation realises multiple benefits. They can do so by: supporting the application of national-level social and environmental standards; informing the development of REDD+ scenarios; and by communicating the potential for multiple benefits from REDD+. Going forward it will be possible to build on the analyses by using improved data on carbon stocks in the DRC and by incorporating spatial data on forest ecosystem services.