REDD+ requires broad institutional and governance reforms, such as tenure, decentralisation, and corruption control. These reforms will enable departures from business as usual, and involve communities and forest users in making and implementing policies that affect them.

Payments based on performance directly incentivise and compensate forest owners and users. But schemes such as payments for environmental services (PES) depend on conditions, such as secure tenure, solid carbon data and transparent governance, that are often lacking and take time to change. This constraint reinforces the need for broad institutional and policy reforms.

REDD+ strategies must include policies outside the forestry sector narrowly defined, such as agriculture and energy, and better coordinate across sectors to deal with non-forest drivers of deforestation and degradation.