In order to do this, funds will be used to compensate developing countries for reducing deforestation as well as conserving and enhancing the capacity of their forests to store carbon – a key component of greenhouse gases. These funds could provide the opportunity to diversify livelihoods, encourage sustainable development, and enhance the adaptive capacity of local populations in the face of a changing climate. However, they could also exacerbate pre-existing conflicts over lands and resources. In order to be both effective and equitable, REDD+ will require large areas of land with clear tenure arrangements. Yet many developing countries suffer from conflicts over land ownership and continue to exclude local communities from land use decisions. How will REDD+ impact peace and security in these countries? By looking at Brazil, Indonesia and Uganda – each with unique issues related to forests and conflict – they examine how these impacts relate to pre-existing structures of power, economy, fairness, safety and well-being. 

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The 4th ASEAN Social Forestry Network (ASFN) Conference, running from June 17-19, aimed to share the forestry experiences of countries in the region in the fields of climate change, community economies, livelihoods and REDD+.

Conducted under the theme ‘Village Forests, REDD+, Conservation and Livelihoods, the conference endeavoured to promote social forestry policy and practice in conservation measures undertaken by governments.

The meeting also aimed to organise dialogue between civil society and the private sector in order to reassign social forestry roles, seeking contributions to forestry policy and practices, especially in terms of addressing climate change and food security.

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The COP/DCOP provide technical and administrative leadership to complex USAID natural resource management projects, and are the primary liaisons between USAID and Tetra Tech, as well as between the project and government and civil society counterparts. The positions require significant coordination skills, broad general natural resource management knowledge and expertise in at least one area that may include forestry, biodiversity, land-use planning, climate change mitigation and adaptation. The positions require experience in developing countries, and skills to ensure coherence and consistency under tight deadlines.

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Although still in early stages, the program has been driving global climate change policy debates and national forest policy revisions since 2008. Yet it faces funding threats from global economic uncertainty caused by the financial crisis.

“There is a limit to how long we can sell a good idea,” said Arild Angelsen, a professor at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (UMB) and editor of Analysing REDD+: Challenges and Choices.

“Over the next two-to-three years we need to see reliable evidence of REDD+ actually producing measurable results.”

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The World Agroforestry Centre and UN-REDD+ are cooperating in a project to and raise public awareness of the green economy, sustainable land use and REDD sustainable forest management.

As part of this work, the Government of Indonesia, the UN-REDD Programme and the World Agroforestry Centre, in partnership with the United Nations Office for REDD+ Coordination in Indonesia (UNORCID), the Global Green Growth Institute and the Overseas Development Institute, convened a global symposium (19-21 June) which reflected on lessons learned during these pilot activities, with the aim of giving key decision makers a better business case for protecting and restoring forests, and a more informed basis for linking REDD+ planning and investments with green economy efforts.

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Deputy Minister for National Development Planning Lukita Dinarsyah Tuwo said that the Green Growth initiative would help the country balance its economic growth and sustainable economy in accordance with its growth target and commitment to maintaining environmental resilience.

Indonesia, according to Lukita, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with GGGI last year for assistance, under which the research organization would offer the help of experts.

“The three components are greening the planning process mainly by carrying out the MP3EI [the Indonesian Economic Development Acceleration Masterplan], formulating a funding mechanism for REDD+ to catalyze green growth and supporting key provincial governments in the prioritization and implementation of green growth,” Lukita said.

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“National Governance Structures for REDD+”, co-authored by Norwegian University of Life Sciences professors Arild Vatn and Paul Vedeld, examines four potential national REDD+ architectures that could be funded directly by a compliance market or by a global fund supported by both public and private sources.

The options outlined in the research paper consider strengths and weaknesses of channeling economic support from the global to the country level through financial-market directed intermediaries, a separate national fund, a fund in a national state administration, or conditional budget support that would direct resources into local projects, national programs or sector policies.

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As part of the plan, Pact brought on board a U.S. brokerage, Terra Global Capital, to help sell the forest’s carbon credits to environmentally conscious firms in the West. Together, after years of preparatory work, the pair were finally closing in on approval of the project and a few months ago had even lined up two private buyers ready to spend nearly $1 million on the first batch of carbon credits from Oddar Meanchey. But when the deciding moment came last month to put pen to paper, there was a glitch.

According to Pact, when the May 20 deadline they had set for the government to sign off on the carbon credit deal came and went without a signature, the two buyers Terra Global and Pact had spent so long nurturing simply walked away. The loss of the carbon credit deal means more for Cambodia than simply missing out on the $1 million.

Until now, Pact has been paying the community forest groups patrolling the sprawling project area in Oddar Meanchey with funds from donors. But those funds are getting harder to come by the longer the project goes without commercial buyers, and that $911,000 would have gone a long way toward keeping the forest patrols going.

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