Meeting: African Indigenous forest leaders prepare for COP-15

Indigenous African leaders from East and Central Africa met in Bujumbura, Burundi to finalise a joint strategy and statement on climate change at a meeting funded by the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation EU-ACP (CTA), as part of a five year programme to strengthen the Indigenous Peoples of Africa Coordinating Committee (IPACC) indigenous network on the African continent.

Leaders from forest based communities in Gabon, Cameroon, DR Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda and Kenya participated in a joint UNIPROBA-IPACC policy meeting to set out their concerns, priorities, action plan and statement ahead of the 15th Conference of Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, due to take place in Copenhagen Denmark.

Leaders emphasised that indigenous peoples are important stakeholders in climate stabilisation in Africa. All indigenous peoples are being hard hit by droughts and flooding in Africa, and they must educate their communities as to the causes and engage with national governments about equitable and sustainable responses.

”Currently, there are indigenous leaders who know more about REDD than people in government. REDD and carbon financing is new for all of us in Africa. The civil society and governments need to work closely on setting up a viable framework for benefit sharing from carbon financing. This is an opportunity for indigenous peoples. Governments need to understand also that REDD is closely linked to land rights and tenure security. Very few indigenous peoples currently have secure land rights, and that needs to be resolved in REDD is to work.” - Kanyinke Sena, an Ogiek activist from Kenya

Read the meeting summary…

New tool: Global forest monitoring

For the first time worldwide, free & ready-to-use high-resolution satellite data is now available to monitor forests & help reduce emissions from deforestation & forest degradation. The monitoring system has been launched by FAO and other partners as part of the Global Forest Resources Assessment. The monitoring system delivers data in a global sample grid at 13 000 locations and provides tools for their interpretation. It is designed to improve global and regional information on forest change in FAO’s assessments of forests. For a country the sample grid can be intensified and become a cost-efficient approach to measure national forest trends.

“This brings a revolution to the forest monitoring field. Never before have data of this kind been provided directly to users in developing countries. Monitoring will be cheaper, more accurate and transparent for countries that want to participate in reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.” - FAO Director General Jacques Diouf.

Visit the Global Forest Resources Assessment website…

Meeting: UN-REDD Programme Asia and Pacific indigenous consultations

The October issue of the UN-REDD Programme newsletter, featuring news on: five new countries that joined the UN-REDD Programme; the first regional consultation between indigenous peoples’ organizations from Asia and the Pacific and the UN-REDD Programme; and the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s request for funding of a Congo Basin approach for monitoring, reporting and verification.

Recommendations from the regional consultation included:

1. taking advantage of the opportunity that REDD provides for engagement among the various stakeholders: CSOs, indigenous peoples, local government, private sector, and others
2. strengthening the opportunities for multi-stakeholder dialogue
3. addressing the widespread need for REDD training and awareness raising
4. a call to the UN-REDD Programme and to the United Nations in general to support governments to improve their means of communication and working relationships with indigenous peoples and their organizations

The Newsletter also includes an analysis on best practices in engaging civil society in REDD in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and promoting co-benefits of forests. It reports on the XIII World Forestry Congress’s support of the inclusion of REDD-plus in the agreement on long-term cooperative action under UNFCCC.

Read the October issue of the UN-REDD Programme newsletter…

Guest Article: Update on Indigenous UNFCCC Preparations

Update on Indigenous UNFCCC Preparations
Special guest article from Fiu Mata’ese Elisara/Executive Director of OLSSI, Samoa

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The few Pacific indigenous peoples’ representatives joined more than 200 of their indigenous brothers and sisters from around the world in Bangkok on Wednesday 07 October 2009 to call on all Parties to recognize and respect the inalienable collective rights over their lands, territories and resources. Policies and actions that are being negotiated now like REDD as just one example, directly affect their ancestral lands, territories, oceans, waters, ice, flora, fauna and forests thereby also affecting the survival and livelihoods of over 370 million Indigenous Peoples all over the world.

In a stock-taking plenary of the Ad-hoc Working Group in Long-term Cooperative Action (AWG-LCA) under the Bali Action Plan held on 2 October 2009 in Bangkok, developing countries expressed their strong concerns over efforts by developed countries to undermine their commitments under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) by shifting their responsibilities to the markets and in weakening their obligations at the Bangkok climate talks. They said that it was not only the Kyoto Protocol that was being “killed”, but also the Convention itself which was being buried under a new structure that would no longer be recognizable. Several developing countries said that it was simply unfair, unreasonable and unhelpful for developed countries to hide their conflicting economic interests behind efforts to re-enact olden days “land grabs” with modern days “sky-grabs”.

Indigenous peoples see much fraud in the current climate change negotiations and see the false solutions to climate change being proposed such as REDD, for example, as CO2lonialism of forests giving the carbon markets power and license to buy and sell permits to pollute through ‘allowances’ and ‘carbon credits’ targeting forests in their territories and lands.

“REDD commoditizes and privatizes the air and forests where carbon traders require legal title to the carbon in the forests and usurp the rights of indigenous peoples to their lands. REDD utilizes carbon market financing to generate profits for the culprit loggers, polluters and forest destroyers, and reduce many of their home forests in indigenous peoples lands and territories to mere carbon sequestration experiments and economic investments.” - Indigenous Environment Network

For Indigenous Peoples, REDD and REDD plus in any Copenhagen outcome must protect intact natural forests, enhance biodiversity, and restore degraded natural forests and not plantations which in their view are not forests, and should be excluded. Copenhagen must include ambitious targets for ending deforestation by 2020. Parties must affirm that traditional sustainable uses are not deforestation and are crucial components for effective adaptation and should address real drivers of deforestation such as large scale industrial activities like logging, cattle ranching, agro-fuel production, and must not benefit from any climate agreement on forests. Policies and measures that stop drivers of deforestation and trade agreements must be included to ensure that they do not contradict or undermine the goal of halting deforestation and degradation.

REDD financing should be additional to, and not a substitute for emission reductions under a climate agreement and must be via a transparent, reliable, additional to official development assistance, and accessible public-funded mechanism under the UNFCCC. Developed countries have a historical responsibility for climate change and must provide adequate financial resources to assist developing countries address the dangerous impacts of climate change. Benefits must reach indigenous peoples and local communities who are forest dependent peoples in an equitable, just, and fair manner.

In their call on the parties, the key messages the indigenous peoples presented in Bangkok further stressed that in the climate change discussions so far, their inalienable, collective rights over their lands, territories, and resources are not being recognized nor included in the discussions despite their ongoing submissions and lobbying. The full participation of indigenous peoples in the planning, design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of all measures are not being taken seriously into account by parties. The empowerment of indigenous peoples and local communities in their view is critical to the successful adaptation strategies to climate change.

Indigenous Peoples around the world are being directly affected by the devastating impacts of the climate change effects like floods, typhoons, cyclones, drought, king tides, sea level rise, etc. are real ongoing contemporary signs that are manifested in the disasters affecting the Philippines, Indonesia, India, Samoa, etc. during the September/October 2009 Bangkok meetings. Mother Earth is aching painfully and terribly as a result and is trying her best to balance herself back to some form of equilibrium by reacting in these ways. These are further reasons why indigenous peoples continue to demand the respect by everyone, especially the rich developed countries with the huge historical responsibilities for greenhouse gas emissions and immense ecological debt to developing countries and indigenous peoples for generations of exploitation of their natural resources including forests, for the rights of Mother Earth to be respected and protected.

Formed in 2000, the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change (IIPFCC) has facilitated the presence of over 200 indigenous representatives from around the world to participate in and try to influence the Bangkok climate change talks as part of a concerted advocacy strategy leading up to Copenhagen.

Guest article: Indigenous Peoples and REDD-Plus

Indigenous Peoples and REDD-Plus
Special guest article from Fiu Mata’ese Elisara/Executive Director of OLSSI, Samoa

—–

In the Bangkok UNFCCC meetings held from 28 September to 9 October 2009, REDD Plus was been trashed by many indigenous peoples as a process aimed at
Reaping profits; from
Evictions, land grabs;
Deforestation; and
Destruction of biodiversity;
Plusthe involvement of Industrial Plantations, GMO Trees and Protected Areas!

Despite the difficult process in these UNFCCC meetings, close to 200 Indigenous Peoples participants including a handful of Pacific representatives are still fighting for REDD processes to be rights based, as defined in UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and other international instruments and agreements regarding the human rights of indigenous peoples and local communities. The right to free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) is a precondition to any activity impacting on indigenous peoples and their lands and consultation is not a substitute for consent. The full and effective participation of indigenous peoples and local communities must be guaranteed throughout the entire REDD process which includes design, planning, implementation and monitoring.

Indigenous peoples say that any lasting reduction of emissions from deforestation and forest degradation is not possible without their full and effective participation and provision of secure tenure for them and forest-dependent local communities. The tenure rights of indigenous peoples and local communities must be recognized, ensured, protected and enhanced throughout REDD related processes and an any accessible, independent and transparent complaints mechanism providing timely redress for adverse impacts of REDD on indigenous peoples and their lands must be included in an international climate agreement.

Whilst Indigenous Peoples see the basic idea behind REDD as simple – that being developing countries that are willing and able to reduce emissions from deforestation should be financially compensated for doing so – REDD is still in their view a CO2lonialism of forests because it in fact allows the northern polluters to buy permits to continue to pollute the atmosphere through ‘carbon credits’ by promising not to cut down forests and plantations in the south where most of the lands and territories are owned by indigenous peoples and local communities.

In its policy proposal on climate change circulated in Bangkok the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change (IIPFCC) quoted its Anchorage Declaration

“…that Mother Earth is no longer in a period of climate change, but in climate crisis….Indigenous peoples have a vital role in defending and healing Mother Earth. We uphold that the inherent rights of indigenous peoples…must be fully respected in all decision-making processes and activities related to climate change…” - Anchorage Declaration

With specific reference to indigenous peoples territories and REDD, the IIPFCC asserted that the global economic transition to sustainable, low carbon development will require revitalization of diverse local economies, including support for indigenous peoples’ self determined development. Economic planning combined with adaptive management to climate change will need to apply an ecosystem-based approach, and must fully respect the rights and interests of indigenous peoples and local communities.

Securing indigenous peoples’ rights to our ancestral lands, forests, waters and resources, provides the basis for sustainable local social, cultural, spiritual and economic development and some insurance against our vulnerability to the impacts of climate change. This is also beneficial towards improving ecosystem governance, ecosystem resilience and the delivery of ecosystem services.

Many forests are within the traditional lands and territories of indigenous peoples and IPs around the world live in and depend upon forests for their survival and to enjoy their fundamental rights to forests and land tenure. They are of cultural, social, economic and spiritual significance for IPs and provide benefits for humankind. Accordingly, the rights of IPs, including their land and resource rights, must be recognized and respected at al levels (local, national and international) before they can consider REDD initiatives and projects. The recognition of their rights must be in accordance with international human rights law and standards including the UNDRIP and ILO Convention 169, among other human rights instruments.

If there is no full recognition and full protection for IPs rights, including the rights to resources, lands and territories, and if there is no recognition and respect of the rights of free, prior and informed consent of the affected IPs, they will oppose REDD and REDD+ and carbon offsetting projects, including CDM projects. All decision-making processes on REDD and REDD+, clean development mechanism (CDM), land use and land use change and forests (LULUCF), agriculture forestry and other land use (AFOLU) as well as other ecosystem-based mitigation and adaptation measures and projects must be conditional to the FPIC of IPs.

IPs contend that their laws, regulations, and plans shall be recognized as authoritative and determinative as to the risks, values and benefits associated with measures to adapt to, or mitigate for, climate change effects within the territorial jurisdiction of tribal governing bodies. The IIPFCC affirm their global solidarity and unity to realize the enjoyment of their collective rights and the recognition of their vision, indigenous knowledge and their contribution to solving the climate change crisis for which REDD and REDD+ is one of the many false solutions promoted by the rich polluting countries in the UNFCCC and Kyoto Protocol processes and basis of their rejection of these proposed mitigation options.

TFD Report: Investing in REDD-plus

More than 100 stakeholders have been involved in a collaborative initiative facilitated by The Forests Dialogue (TFD) to build an effective international mechanism for tackling the climate, community and biodiversity issues associated with deforestation. The publication “Investing in REDD-plus” reflects unique consensus amongst forest stakeholders across business, environmental and scientific sectors and from indigenous peoples and forest-based communities, who met in a stream of intensive dialogues this year.

The report recommends that REDD-plus should be designed as a performance-based mechanism that achieves real CO2 emission reductions by reducing deforestation and degradation, and through conservation, sustainable forest management and the enhancement of carbon stocks. A phased approach will enable REDD-plus to address the drivers of deforestation according to country-specific circumstances. Each phase of REDD-plus should be funded through a portfolio of financial resources that make optimal and coordinated use of both markets and funds, as well as other sources of finance. Safeguards must guarantee equitable participation and distribution mechanisms for indigenous peoples and local communities as well as biodiversity conservation.

” REDD-plus projects must demonstrate: … Social integrity—by recognizing, protecting and respecting the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities and ensuring that they can develop their livelihoods and share the benefits of REDD-plus” – Extract from Investing in REDD-plus

Download Investing in REDD-plus: Consensus on frameworks for the financing and implementation of REDD-plus [pdf]…

News: Indigenous representatives on UN-REDD Policy Board

After being nominated and self-selected by civil society organizations (CSOs) worldwide, the CSO representatives to the UN-REDD Policy Board were announced to be: Pacifique Mukumba Isumbisho, Support Center for Indigenous Pygmies and Vulnerable Minorities; Effrey Dademo, the Papua New Guinea Eco-Forestry Forum; Paula Moreira, Amazon Environmental Research Institute; and Rosalind Reeve, Global Witness.

One full member seat and three observer seats on the Policy Board are reserved for representatives of civil society, and full member status will rotate among the group of CSO representatives at least once per year. The CSO representatives will, inter alia, participate in and provide input for Policy Board meetings and share and disseminate information among their networks and constituencies.

Read the UN-REDD press release…

News: UN-REDD and indigenous peoples’ engagement in Africa

The September issue of the UN Collaborative Programme on Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (UN-REDD) Programme newsletter features news on the UN high-level event on forests and climate change, a commentary on REDD and indigenous peoples’ engagement in Africa, and reports on a technical meeting on forest degradation and a measuring, reporting and verification meeting, both held in September 2009, in Rome, Italy.

“In the context of climate change, indigenous peoples in Africa are the most vulnerable group, occupying fragile ecosystems. They bear the catastrophe with no access to resources to cope with the changes. Worse still, mitigation initiatives being developed pose more land tenure security threats. This is mainly due to lack of meaningful participation in decision making on the various projects being developed in their lands and territories.” - Elifuraha Isaya Laltaika

Other topics in the September issue of the newsletter include: a systematic review of methods to measure and assess terrestrial carbon for countries embarking on REDD; and the launch of a US$4.38 million UN-REDD Viet Nam Programme.

Read the September issue of the UN-REDD Programme Newsletter…

IIED Report: REDD and Payments for Ecosystem Services

Incentives to sustain forest ecosystem services: A review and lessons for REDD, Ivan Bond, Maryanne Grieg-Gran, Sheila Wertz-Kanounnikoff, Peter Hazlewood, Sven Wunder, Arild Angelsen. IIED (2009), 62 pages, isbn: 9781843697428

An assessment of the utility of payments for ecosystem services as a tool for REDD was commissioned by the Norwegian Minister for the Environment and International Development to inform Norway’s International Climate and Forest Initiative (N-CFI). The N-CFI specifically recognises that REDD efforts should contribute to securing indigenous peoples’ rights, improving the livelihoods of forest-dependent communities, and to conserving forest biodiversity. This report represents a summary of ten papers which made up the assessment.

The report looks into how compensation for ecosystem services could contribute to REDD, and reviews 13 Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) projects in Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America. PES are designed to provide financial incentives to the land owner to preserve the forest and are thought to be an effective instrument for implementing REDD. Under PES, payments for environmental services are conditional and are only made if the service, such as conserving forest areas, is delivered.Important preconditions for success include supporting improved forest governance, land tenure and rights for forest dependent communities, as well as scaling up current small-scale experience with PES.

One of the recurring concerns with payments for ecosystem services, particularly in the context of the much larger-scale payment schemes that would be required for REDD, is that indigenous and forest-dependent communities will not benefit or, worse, will suffer harm. Prospective areas of concern that payments for REDD might impact include:

• Weakening of land and resource rights of indigenous and forest dependent communities.
• Equity in opportunities to participate as sellers of carbon.
• Equity in payment levels and terms – vulnerable communities may be subjected to exploitative contracts.
• Local economy impacts, which through effects on food prices and employment can affect both participants and non-participants in PES.

However, this review of PES schemes finds little evidence of long-term adverse effects on equity for the four issues above. If anything, PES schemes have proved to generally yield positive impacts on poor people in the areas where they were implemented.

“The hypothesis that PES tools could lead to inequity and exacerbate poverty is not borne out by the literature review or the four regional case studies. The evidence is that some programmes have made small and modest impacts on livelihoods. Recent work on payments for watershed services also concludes that these mechanisms have not yet directly impacted on poverty reduction to any great extent, although their indirect impacts have significant potential for poverty reduction.” - Extract from Incentives to sustain forest ecosystem services.

Some of the specific findings include:

• PES schemes have not led to weakening of land tenure and in some cases have strengthened it.
• In Southeast Asia, where PES mechanisms are just emerging, the approach of strengthening land rights (Sumberjaya) or enforcing traditional rights (Ulu Masen) do have potential livelihood impacts where local people’s rights too often have been ignored.
• PES mechanisms have a longer history and are being more widely applied in Latin America than elsewhere. Initial assessments showed that the first generation Costa Rica national PES scheme was failing to reach poorer farmers and land users who held no formal land titles and could not afford the associated transaction costs. Subsequent iterations of the programme have developed mechanisms to specifically ensure that they are targeted to poor people and that the barriers to entry are either lowered or removed.
• Small-scale farmers with informal land tenure have been able to participate in some PES schemes, notably the national payment for watershed services scheme in Mexico. One of the measures used in Mexico (and more recently in Costa Rica) to facilitate participation of small-scale farmers and communitiesis ‘collective contracting’, where several small-scale farmers conduct the contracting process together and in this way reduce individual transaction costs.
• In spite of seemingly low levels of payment, PES is popular with farmers. There is an eagerness to enter PES schemes (both Costa Rica’s and Mexico’s schemes are over-subscribed) and sometimes a willingness to negotiate permanent payments after a pilot, as in Pimampiro. This enthusiasm is an indication that PES schemes are perceived as advantageous by those involved.
• There is little evidence of local economy impacts on prices and employment.

Download the Incentives to sustain forest ecosystem services: A review and lessons for REDD report [pdf]…

Meeting: Second World Agroforestry Congress

The World Agroforestry Centre and the United Nations Environment Programme co-hosted the 2nd World Congress of Agroforestry in Nairobi, Kenya from 23-28 August 2009.

The overall theme of the Congress was Agroforestry, the future of global land use. The sub-themes were Food Security and Livelihoods; Conservation and Rehabilitation of Natural Resources; and Policies and Institutions. Researchers, educators, practitioners and policy makers from around the world shared new research ideas and experiences, explored partnership opportunities and strengthened communities of practice.

Some of the presentations relevant to indigenous peoples and REDD are referenced below. Presentation slides or notes have been linked where available.

Session 26: Local Knowledge in agroforestry science (Led by L Joshi)

• Enhancing the ecological and functional roles of shade trees in cocoa farms: participatory tree diversification in Ghana – Richard Asare, Forest and Landscapes Denmark and International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA).
• The gender of trees: Local knowledge systems in a forest fringe community in rural Ghana – Christine Gibb, University of Guelph, Canada. Download ppt slides…
• Participatory Design and Assessment of Swiss Agroforestry Systems – Firesenai Sereke, Research Station ART, Switzerland
• The encounter between local and professional knowledge regarding tree growing in the southwest Amazon – Paulina Campos on behalf of Juan Carlos Montero, Institute of Silviculture, University of Freiburg, Germany. Download ppt slides…
• Local ecological knowledge as key to managing the trade-off between biodiversity and livelihoods in Fouta – Serge Ngendakumana, World Agroforestry Centre, Guinea. Download ppt slides…
• Comparative analysis of farmers’ knowledge about ecosystem services and coffee productivity across Central America – Carlos Cerdan, CATIE-Bangor University. Download ppt slides…
• Local ecological knowledge in the development of reward mechanism for watershed services – Elok Mulyoutami, World Agroforestry Centre, Indonesia
• Leveraging local knowledge systems for combating climate change – lessons from indigenous agroforestry practices in central India – Yogesh Jadhav, Institute of Professional Education and Research, India.

Session 27: The role of underutilized crops for agroforestry (Led by P Van Damme & Z Tchoundjeu)

• Indigenous Lac Production Strategies of the Monga-stricken People in Rural Bangladesh: A Study on Agroforestry – Zulfiquar Ali Islam, University of Rajshahi, Bangladesh.

Session 28: Agroforestry-based livelihood strategies for smallholders in the Amazon (Led by R. Porro, J. Ugarte & O. Llanque)

• Contribution of Forest Products and Agroforestry for Livelihoods of Indigenous and Colonist Communities in the Peruvian Amazon – Abel Meza, World Agroforestry Centre, Peru.
• The role of agroforestry-based practices in shaping policies and programs for licit smallholder livelihoods in the Colombian Amazon – Bertha Leonor Ramírez Pava, Universidad de la Amazonia, Colombia.
• Description of homegardens in Araçá Indigenous Land, in the Lavrado (savannas) of Roraima, Brazil – Robert P. Miller, FUNAI, Brazil.

Session 31B: Rewards for the environmental services of agroforestry: Payment for watershed/biodiversity services and cross-cutting issues (Led by Thomas Yatich & Oluyede Ajayi)

• Payments for Watershed Services: Implications and Considerations for Upland Indigenous Groups in Sibuyan Island, Philippines – Presenter: Edgardo Tongson, World Wide Fund for Nature – Philippines.

Visit the website for the 2nd World Congress of Agroforestry…