Securing Rights, Combating climate change
•Download as PPTX, PDF•
1 like•844 views
This presentation by Caleb Stevens was given at a session titled "Securing rights as a climate change mitigation strategy" at the Global Landscapes Forum in Lima, Peru, on December 6, 2014. By discussing how securing rights can serve as proven and cost-effective climate change mitigation strategy, the session built bridges between policy-makers, practitioners, and scholars.
Recommended
More Related Content
What's hot
What's hot (20)
Viewers also liked
Viewers also liked (7)
Similar to Securing Rights, Combating climate change
Similar to Securing Rights, Combating climate change (20)
More from CIFOR-ICRAF
More from CIFOR-ICRAF (20)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
Securing Rights, Combating climate change
- 2. SECURING RIGHTS, COMBATING CLIMATE CHANGE How Strengthening Community Forest Rights Mitigates Climate Change: A Report by WRI and RRI
- 3. WITH THANKS TO And other partners
- 4. COMBATING DEFORESTATION ESSENTIAL TO CLIMATE CHANGE 11% of CO2 from deforestation and other land uses Image: Aulia Erlangga, CIFOR
- 5. COMMUNITIES HOLD THE KEY TO PROTECTING THE FORESTS
- 6. REPORT METHODOLOGY • 130 studies reviewed • Original deforestation and carbon analysis
- 8. OUR FINDINGS
- 9. OUR FINDINGS: RIGHTS ARE A SOLUTION
- 10. WHY DO COMMUNITIES TEND TO PROTECT THE FOREST?
- 11. MAPPING COMMUNITY FOREST WITH GLOBAL FOREST WATCH
- 19. XINGU INDIGENOUS PARK IN BRAZIL Deforestation in Xingu from 2000 to 2012 was 3%
- 20. COMMUNITY CONCESSIONS IN GUATEMALA MAYA BIOSPHERE RESERVE • Deforestation as low as .02% • US $18.7 million annually in income
- 21. SUCCESSFUL FOREST RESTORATION IN NIGER 30 million tonnes of carbon
- 22. OUR RECOMMENDATIONS TO NATIONAL GOVERNMENTS Image: Istockphoto
- 23. WHAT ACTIONS CAN BE TAKEN? • DONOR SUPPORT • GREEN CLIMATE FUND • INDCs Image: switchboard.nrdc.org
Editor's Notes
- The threat of deforestation to forest communities and climate change is real. Globally, 50 soccer fields worth of forests are lost every minute. But in many heavily-forested countries with weak or no legal recognition and protection of community forest rights, the percentage of CO2 from deforestation and other land uses is even higher—reaching as high as nearly 60% of some countries annual GHG emissions.
- No one has a stronger interest in the health of forests than the local and indigenous communities that depend on them for their food, livelihoods and culture. Globally, communities have legally or officially recognized rights to about one eighth of the world’s forests (FAO: 4 billion ha; RRI: 513 million ha), an area about twice the size of India. (CIA World Factbook) As impressive as this number may seem, it masks the even large estimated amounts of community forest out there where the communities have no or weak legal rights and insufficient government protection Recent study by Wayne Walker of WoodsHole Research Center and many others shows that the Amazon’s Indigenous Territories and Government Protected Areas store more above ground carbon than in all of DRC and Indonesia combined. And a conservative estimate is that 20% of this carbon is at risk of being released through conversion to non-forest uses.
- This report is a synthesis of the evidence on the relationship between community forest tenure and climate change mitigation I would like to note a few ways in which the report was innovative Most comprehensive review of the evidence to date (both quantitative and qualitative), capturing about 130 studies, mostly from the last 10 years Authors conducted original deforestation and carbon analysis And, as will be shown, the report centers around 14 country discussions—the sources reviewed overwhelmingly focused on these 14 countries To be clear what this report isn’t Research question was not what causes deforestation or whether communities are more adept at protecting their forest than government protected areas Does not make specific findings as to what rights or specific institutional arrangements tend to lead to positive forest outcomes As primarily a literature review, does not conduct advanced quantitative, spatial analyses Both of these I think can be the basis for compelling follow-on research using a growing database of community land location data on Global Forest Watch’s People Layer and as part of a multi-stakeholder effort to produce the world’s first Global Map of Indigenous and Community Lands
- Two variables of interest are the legal rights recognized and the government action to protect or undermine those rights In each of our country cases, the community tenure type analyzed enjoyed significant legal rights. One except is Indonesia, which we categorize as weak or no legal rights b/c prior to Constitutional Court ruling in 2013, few communities were able to avail themselves of the legal protections ostensibly afforded by the law through one of 4 tenure types: [adat forest (customary law forest), hutan kemasyarakatan (rural or community forest), kemitraan (partnership), and hutan tanaman rakyat (people plantation)] Each of these variables were assessed at the national level for all community tenure types as a category, not on the community level So the assessment of whether the government acted to support or not communities was based on a national level assessment
- For communities have rights to 37.7 billion tonnes of CO2e, equivalent to 29 times the annual CO2 footprint of all passenger vehicles in the world. By empowering communities to protect their forests, we can prevent this massive amount of carbon from reaching the atmosphere.
- Some of the most studied and compelling cases discussed in the report are Indigenous Lands in Brazil and Community Concessions in the Guatemala Maya Biosphere Reserve. The report shows that deforestation rates inside community forests with strong legal recognition and government protection are dramatically lower than in forests outside those areas. As you can see: deforestation in Indigenous Lands is 11 times less than in other parts of the Brazilian Amazon and 20 times less in community concessions in the Maya Biosphere Reserve, where the community is long established in the forest, when compared with the so-called strictly protected areas of the Reserve of which no use of the forest is legally permitted
- So why is it that some forests are experiencing rampant deforestation while legally recognized community forests fair so much better? What makes them special? The answer is by and large their ability to sustainably manage the forest and repel outsiders. By far the most significant challenge that forest communities are faced with is illegal miners, loggers, settlers or extractive companies coming onto their land and destroying the forest for their own benefit. In the 14 countries discussed in the report, the ones that saw the greatest loss of community forests were those that allocated community forests for commercial operations or refused to help communities settle disputes with settlers or prevent encroachments by settlers. Conversely those that saw better results were those that experienced some measure of government protection and support Now some qualifiers Obviously other factors play a role in deforestation, these are tenure and non-tenure. For example, we do not frame our analysis in terms of devolution of rights but rather based on the bundle of rights framework. For the rights in the previous slide, for most of them one could assess the extent to which the government retains some measure of decision-making authority or the community does, and exactly how that division operates. Although we make no express findings on this point, country cases discuss this issue. Non-tenure factors that are relevant are many, such as location and community cohesion—legal rights and community support are necessary but not sufficient conditions for positive forest outcomes.
- Comes from WRI’s Global Forest Watch—near real time monitoring of forest loss and gain, combined with a People layer of community location data. WRI’s land and resource rights initiative is also partnering with a number of organizations around the world to create a more detailed, data-rich platform on indigenous and community land rights. Talking points for images: The screenshots are of the rainforest in Southwest Brazil—the Xingu Indigenous Land and surrounding indigenous lands (in all there are 20 separate legally recognized indigenous lands in the Xingu river Basin) The bluish grey areas are indigenous lands – data provided by the Brazilian government. The pink indicates forest loss at a 30 meter resolution, data produced by the University of Maryland and Google, and hosted on GFW. The time series shows deforestation each year proliferating up to the borders of the indigenous regions. This case study indicates that indigenous peoples in Brazil are effective defenders of forests If Brazil's forests continue to be protected by supporting communities, enforcing current prohibitions on commercial use of their forest land, and finalizing the registration and mapping of Indigenous Lands, by 2050 could prevent the equivalent of 3 years’ worth of CO2 from all Latin Am and Caribbean countries.
- Divided into 4 sections (Upper, Middle, Lower, and Eastern), the Xingu Indigenous Park is home to 16 separate indigenous groups. Part of a biodiversity corridor in Brazil’s southwest the size of Ecuador that includes government protected areas. Each section is headed by a Director and each indigenous group has one or more indigenous associations. The umbrella organization for the entire Xingu is ATIX or the Xingu Indigenous Land Association, headed by a President and Vice-President elected by the Directors and leaders of each indigenous association. In general only Indigenous People living in ATIX may be members of ATIX and attend meetings. ISA and other civil society organizations, as well as FUNAI and other Brazilian government agencies, typically do not attend. Sustainable commercial use of non-timber resources is permitted even without a management plan but timber is only for subsistence. ATIX is seriously discussing ecotourism as a forest management and income generating activity. Deforestation in Xingu from 2000 to 2012 was just 3% compared to 7% for the Brazilian Amazon outside Indigenous Lands
- The Maya Biosphere Reserve is a UNESCO World Heritage Site Community concessions operate under a management agreement for renewable 25 year periods 8 legally recognized community forests in Guatemala Maya Biosphere Reserve earn in total about US$18.7 million annually from the sustainable harvesting and sale of timber and non-timber forest products. But to put that in perspective, without these rights they would likely be among the rural poor living on US$2 per day or less than a US$1000 per year annual income—so the amount is very significant for them. For example, the Carmelita community concession in the Reserve, forest products give the community up to US$11,000 per month in income. They use this money to buy better equipment, improve their production processes, get access to better education and healthcare, and pay taxes
- Increased forest rights for farmers in Niger have added 200 million new trees over the past 20 years storing an additional 30 million tonnes of carbon. A relatively modest investment in the 1980s and 1990s by development assistance agencies and NGOs to strengthen community land and forest rights through institutional reforms and local training has generated about US$900 million in annual economic benefits.
- National governments and other stakeholders need to do the following to help communities protect forests and our climate.
- Donor Support Development assistance agencies should channel support to IP and local community forest tenure as part of their climate change strategies. NORAD appears to be leading the way with a recent call for proposals as part of their International Climate and Forest Initiative GCF The Green Climate Fund could also step in. There may be space for integrating community forest tenure somehow into its investment framework INDCs One way governments can include community forest rights is by making them part of achieving national GHG reduction targets set forth in their INDCs Another way is to make strengthening community forest rights the specific policy or mitigation actions in INDCs So for community forest rights, one specific policy action could be titling (or mapping and registering community forests) One of the biggest challenges will be the method for reporting the effect on emissions Here the GHG Policy and Action Standard can be used, which, as many of you know, requires Defining a baseline scenario (or GHG emissions without the policy intervention) Defining a policy scenario (or GHG emissions with the policy intervention) But what precise method to use to define these two scenarios and deal with the counterfactual issue of what would have happened but for the community forest policy intervention? One option is to use what is called a matching technique, which has been developed by experts and academics over the last several years with the advent of better satellite deforestation data and community land location data. In essence, this advanced statistical method controls for the many variables impacting deforestation—forest type, location, rainfall patterns, etc. They do so by essentially comparing forest that is legally recognized community forest with another forest area similar in all other respects except it is not legally-recognized community forest. Something like this could be used to determine both baseline scenarios and policy scenarios.