By John Parrotta (Deputy Coordinator, IUFRO Division 8) and Lawal Marafa (Chair of the Conference Organizing Committee)
Dealing with uncertainties
“Adopting REDD+” conference (Photo by Lawal Marafa)
REDD+ (reducing greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and enhancing forest carbon stocks in developing countries) is an evolving mechanism for climate change mitigation under continued debate within and outside of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). While it has the potential to realize its primary climate change mitigation objective, there is considerable uncertainty regarding its actual or potential impacts on biodiversity, forests and the livelihoods of people in the tropical and sub-tropical forested landscapes where REDD+ implementation is envisaged.
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How IUFRO’s Special Programme for Development of Capacities (SPDC) contributes to enhancing forest science communication within the framework of a Climate Change Adaptation Program in Bhutan.
Photo by András Darabant, BOKU, Austria
Would you like to see your forest be wrapped up in plastic? Well, this is what Bhutanese society will witness due to a research project that aims at simulating drought, which may affect the region’s forests in the future as a result of climate change. In order to inflict drought stress on mature trees, entire research plots of considerable size have been covered with plastic roofs in about 2 m height above ground level, preventing rain water from reaching the soil and roots of trees. But would local people show understanding for such a measure and approve of it easily?
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NOTE: This text is reblogged from the CIFOR blog post at http://blog.cifor.org/20697/toss-cliches-aside-and-consider-gender-in-landscape-context-expert#.Us022ifzzTO
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We need to challenge our own blind spots and put gender research into practice, said Esther Mwangi, a senior scientist with the Forests and Governance Program at the Center for International Forestry Research. CIFOR/Ollivier Girard
WARSAW, Poland (18 December 2013) — Crafting development strategies based on credible research results rather than relying on outdated, unsubstantiated statistics will eliminate gender stereotypes and boost the fight against climate change, a development expert says.
Steering sustainable development polices toward a “landscapes approach” framework, which applies an integrated approach to land management, will make the relevance of gender to environmental debates even more apparent, said Seema Arora-Jonsson, associate professor of rural development with the University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala, Sweden.
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How well-prepared are today’s forestry students? How do professionals, teachers, and students themselves perceive upcoming challenges and chances in terms of forestry education? Do university curricula adequately prepare forestry graduates to meet the demands and needs of the job market?
IUFRO, the global network for forest science cooperation and IFSA, the International Forestry Students’ Association are well-positioned to tackle this issue of forestry education at an academic level, owing to their global scope and mission statements.
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Discussion Forum on Governance and Legal Frameworks… Photo by Hugo Pierre, IUFRO
1. How can landscape approaches contribute to the UNFCCC process?
Landscape approaches require governance and legal frameworks to cross levels and sectors, informed by the best possible science of the problem. A policy learning architecture is needed to assess how interests and imperatives are prioritized and how collaborative solutions can be found.
2. How can landscape approaches contribute to the design of Sustainable Development Goals and their achievement?
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Over the last 30 years practitioners and scholars have been dealing with a range of interventions designed to improve global forest management. These included criteria and indicators (C&I), forest certification and, more recently, legality verification and REDD+, to name but a few.
Editor of the Series Benjamin Cashore, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies
Despite these well intended efforts, frustration exists about their impacts on the ground when addressing deforestation, forest degradation, carbon emissions, and improving the livelihoods of forest dependent people.
Often, potentially transformative interventions are “abandoned” prematurely and replaced by new interventions as stakeholders “learn” about limited results on the ground.
How might learning be developed that might help nurture enduring institutions capable of addressing such thorny challenges?
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Is there a chance of providing enough food for 9 billion people on earth and at the same time ensuring that natural resources such as forests, soil and water are not depleted or destroyed and climate change impacts are not aggravated? This is the main question that the Global Landscape Forum will address in the coming two days in between the first and the second week of the COP19 climate negotiations in Warsaw.
One day ahead of the GLF, a distinguished panel shared their thoughts on the Global Landscape Forum’s goals and importance to international climate discussions and negotiations at a press briefing.
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GLF Discussion Forum jointly organized by World Farmers’ Organisation (WFO); International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO);
Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR);
Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN);
On Sunday, 17 November 2013 at 15:00-17:30, Old Library Building, (Room 214-216).
http://www.landscapes.org/agenda-item/day-2-nov-17-2/discussion-forums/linking-gendered-knowledge-gender-responsive-action-landscape-works/#.Umr8SJz-Jhg
Keynote speaker Seema Arora-Jonsson from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences senses a resurgent anxiety about gender in environmental policy and practice today. The landscape approach with its focus on the geographical context and its overlapping relationships makes the importance of gender all the more apparent.
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Beyond natural conditions it is the institutional setting that determines how landscapes are used. The institutional setting encompasses governance frameworks at multiple political levels including a multitude of public, private and societal actors.
Photo IUFRO (Costa Rica)
However, after years of recognizing the need for coordinated multilevel governance, we have failed. To move forward, we need to think about why we have failed and, from there, develop a new architecture consistent with this explanation.
Obviously, complex multilevel governance of landscapes brings an increasing diversity of actors with different values to the table, with the intersection of state and private, global to local, across multiple sectors each focused on different problems and policy instrument preferences, creating challenges for coordination within the systems of power that result.
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Food Market in Machachi, Ecuador (Photo by IUFRO)
Forests play a major role in achieving Millennium Development Goal 1 to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger and in striving for food security. Globally, millions of people depend on forests for their food security and nutrition, directly through the consumption or sale of foods produced in forests, indirectly through forest-related employment and income, forest ecosystem services, and forest biodiversity.
Current approaches to increasing food security tend to concentrate on agricultural solutions, ranging from intensification of agricultural production outside of forests to promoting agroforestry systems. Policy recommendations to establish a framework for promoting food security from forests, however, have so far been rather general and no framework addresses the relationship between forests and food security directly.
The “International Conference on Forests for Food Security and Nutrition”, held at FAO Headquarters in Rome in May 2013, inter alia conveyed the key message that forests, trees and agroforestry systems demand greater attention in strategies for food security and nutrition and in the fight against hunger. It also called for improved data collection at national and international levels.
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