WRI Stories Feed: The Governance of Forests Initiative

Forests and REDD+ in COP17 Durban

Florence Daviet — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 17:37:59 -0500

With all its complex processes and acronyms, it’s easy to forget that the international climate change negotiations are supposed to lead to changes on the ground. There have been several developments this year, however, which should remind us of…

World Resources Institute Comments on the Forest Investment Program Results Framework

Florence Daviet — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 14:36:46 -0500

The Forest Investment Program (FIP) is a targeted program within the framework of the Climate Investment Funds that supports developing countries’ efforts to reduce deforestation and forest degradation (REDD). The FIP Results Framework is a tool to monitor and evaluate the implementation of FIP funds. Following are WRI’s comments suggesting ways to improve the FIP Results Framework.

For full text, download the PDF (PDF, 11 pages, 591 Kb)
See also: WRI Comments on the Climate Investment Funds Results Frameworks

WRI welcomes the opportunity to comment on the December 2010 version of the FIP Results Framework. This analysis focuses on the Framework’s governance related results and indicators, drawing on the Governance of Forests Initiative Framework of Indicators, a diagnostic tool for gathering evidence-based research on the strengths and weaknesses of forest governance Civil society partners in Brazil and Indonesia have piloted these indicators, with support from WRI; this work has provided valuable insights into the types of evidence that can be gathered to assess forest governance institutions and practices.

This analysis identifies five areas of the FIP Results Framework where we believe improvements in governance would lead to the desired results. We suggest potential governance indicators for each area, and describe what kind of evidence would be needed respond to these indicators. As much as possible we sought to refine or replace indicators rather than add additional ones.

Our comments are structured as follows:

Overarching recommendations
Governance indicator recommendations
Additional comments

In addition, we have included an Annex where we provide information about the type of evidence that could be used to support claims of governance improvements for many of the indicators we recommend.

Main Recommendations

Overarching

Narrow the FIP Project/Program results and align them more clearly with the results on governance sought at the “Catalytic Replication Outcome” level.
Focus on “process” rather than “outcome” indicators to assess governance at the “Project/Program Outcome and Outputs” level.
Focus governance indicators on assessing implementation of actions, rather than on the existence of rules, policies or laws.

Project/Program Indicators

Change the forest management indicator to capture whether protected areas are effectively being managed, not just whether they are being formed.
Include tenure indicators that assess the administration of land tenure laws and the existence of mechanisms to resolve land tenure conflicts.
Refine the indicators related to the empowerment of local communities and Indigenous Peoples to more accurately capture what is meant by “empowerment”.

To continue reading, download the PDF (PDF, 11 pages, 591 Kb)

From Copenhagen to Cancun: Forests and REDD+

Florence Daviet — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 14:47:07 -0500

An update on the role of forests and REDD+ in the international climate negotiations.

Background on REDD

Deforestation and forest degradation threaten the global climate system by removing one of the planet’s essential absorbers and storehouses of carbon. Currently, forest loss is thought to contribute between 12-17 percent of annual global greenhouse gas emissions. The United Nations Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations offer Parties an opportunity to better recognize forests’ contribution to the global climate system and to protect them both for mitigation and adaptation purposes. Parties can do this in part by creating a system for positive incentives to developing countries who take actions to reduce emissions from forest loss and degradation and increase carbon storage (known as “REDD+”).

From Copenhagen to Cancun covers the key issues in the ongoing international climate negotiations. The series looks at where things stand after the 2009 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) meeting in Copenhagen and how discussions progress towards COP-16 in Cancun.

How this will be accomplished, however, is much more complicated. It requires figuring out what the rules would be, how efforts would be funded, and how success would be defined and measured. In Cancun, negotiators will need to make several decisions to clarify rules around safeguards, finance, the scope of REDD+ and methodological issues.

REDD+ in 2010

The outcome of the last major UNFCCC meeting in Copenhagen was a heads-of-state-negotiated “Copenhagen Accord,” a non-binding political statement outlining principles to keep global warming to 2 degrees Celsius. The Accord noted the important role of REDD+, building on the political support that has been stated in several different meetings since the Bali Conference of the Parties in 2007.

Prior to the development of the Accord, however, negotiators in Copenhagen worked on a much more detailed REDD+ language (the “REDD+ decision text”) which they hoped the parties would adopt to further guide the development of actions for REDD+.

Since the Copenhagen negotiations, countries have reopened the REDD+ decision text, and some of the changes proposed may be significant, such as which activities to include in the REDD+ framework. Nevertheless, a REDD+ decision in Cancun is still being put forward as one of the most likely outcomes of the conference of the Parties (COP) in Cancun.

The details that will be agreed on, however, will depend on whether the Chair of overall negotiations (AWG-LCA) decides to only have one balanced text, or would allow the additional REDD+ decision text to be included as an annex.

REDD + in Cancun: Key Discussion Points

Assuming that a more complete REDD+ decision moves forward in Cancun, a number of important elements of the text need to be finalized and agreed to in Cancun decision, including:

Clarity around Safeguards
One important task for negotiators would be to agree to and clarify the rules around safeguards, even if only at a high level. Social and environmental safeguards ensure the reductions from reduced deforestation and degradation are undertaken in a socially responsible and environmentally sound way. For instance, for any mechanism to be effective, it is essential that the communities (particularly indigenous communities) that rely on the forests for their livelihoods are brought into the decision-making process, and that transparent and effective governance structures are in place to help achieve this.

Social and environmental safeguards for REDD+ were discussed at length before and during Copenhagen negotiations, but some final points need to be agreed on. Among the questions that need to be answered include:

Will developing countries be supported to put the processes and procedures in place to ensure that safeguards will be met?
Will recognition and support of REDD actions taken only occur if countries can demonstrate that safeguards were met?
How will developed countries be recognized for the finance they have provided to put in place such systems?

These questions were left open in the REDD+ text after Copenhagen, although some of the language put forward in subsequent meetings start to more clearly link safeguards to actions and finance.¹

The question of whether and how countries providing and receiving financing for REDD+ activities will be held accountable for the safeguards is still unknown. Many are looking to non-UNFCCC multilateral initiatives like the UN-REDD Programme and the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility for guidance on this issue.

Clear language agreed in a REDD+ decision defining safeguards would help donors and multi-lateral programs answer these questions appropriately. Furthermore, clarifying rules around safeguards will help implement REDD+ activities and coordinate financial commitments.

REDD+ Finance
To date the discussions around REDD+ finance have mostly centered on the type of finance (markets or funds) to be used for REDD+ activities. In the Copenhagen decision text on REDD+, finance is mentioned only briefly and simply states all the options.

While some more specific language has come up in negotiations since Copenhagen – including a proposal that REDD+ activities not be financed through a carbon market approach – further thinking about what language to include on finance in an agreement is needed.

In the context of the broader negotiations, finance discussions have centered on creating a fund for all climate activities. Yet to date, REDD+ negotiators have not put forward language for how REDD+ finance – if included in such a fund – would be managed and what activities would be prioritized. For example, they might wish to provide principles around the distribution of finance between different REDD+ phases currently in the text.

As decisions are made in Cancun, negotiators will need to figure out if REDD+ finance questions are being handled within the finance text regarding the fund or if there are details needed in the REDD+ text.

Defining the Scope of REDD+
The type of activities recognized as part of a REDD+ decision is still in flux. The REDD+ decision text from Copenhagen includes references to:

Reducing emissions from deforestation;
Reducing emissions from forest degradation;
Conservation of forest carbon stocks;
Sustainable management of forests;
Enhancement of forest carbon stocks;

The Accord, however, only mentions the first three. In subsequent negotiations on the REDD+ decision, countries have proposed still other configurations, such as the first and the fourth. In order to clarify which activities will receive compensation, the definition of what constitutes REDD+ will need to be made consistent in the UN process.

Giving SBSTA a Mandate
Regardless of whether one or all of the issues above are addressed in Cancun, one of the most important actions from a decision in Cancun would be to give the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) a mandate to continue to do more research on REDD+ methodologies. Through a mandate in the decision text, SBSTA could start the work identified in Copenhagen including:

identifying the drivers of deforestation
ensuring the effective engagement of indigenous peoples and local communities in monitoring and reporting
examining other methodological issues related to quantifying emissions and emission reductions for REDD+
considering how activities taken in Phase 1 and 2 should be tracked and recognized as part of the REDD+ framework.

In addressing these key issues in Cancun, negotiators will be one step closer to reducing emissions from forest activities in a meaningful way.

See the language added in Option 1: projects that “allow industrial scale logging or that involve conversion of natural forests to plantations or other commercial or infrastructure activities and projects that damage the environment or violate the rights of local communities;” would not be considered for financing (pg 53). ↩

REDD Alert: Lessons from Peru’s Camisea Pipeline Project

Janet Ranganathan — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 11:48:31 -0400

Can forest-rich countries learn from the mistakes of extractive projects and avoid unleashing their own resource curse?

For poor developing countries, exploiting natural wealth such as minerals and metals should prove a blessing, offering the potential to generate huge revenues and help lift them out of poverty. Instead many have been inflicted by the “natural resource curse”, in which countries with an abundance of natural resources enjoy less economic growth and worse development outcomes than those endowed with less of Nature’s bounty.

Despite efforts to improve governance and oversight related to extractive industries projects, the natural resource curse persists today. A recent WRI, Oxfam and Bank Information Center report shines the spotlight on the Camisea natural gas project in Peru and highlights the importance of investing in sub-national governance and capacity building before scaling up investments in natural resource projects.

$1 billion in gas revenue, but poverty remains

The findings of the report, People, Power and Pipelines, as described in this article, have implications not only for extractive industry projects, but also for forest management in developing countries. In particular, international financial institutions, national governments and other stakeholders involved in REDD - that seek to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation - should learn from the mistakes of extractive projects and avoid unleashing their own resource curse.

Read the Report

The massive Camisea project’s gas production infrastructure and pipeline physically impacted five of Peru’s 24 regions, three of which are among the poorest in the country. Between 2004 and 2009, over $1 billion in gas revenues were distributed to sub-national governments. Yet the social benefits have arguably been slight. In 2008 close to 60% of Peru’s rural population remained mired in poverty, including regions benefiting from pipeline revenues, and despite the fact that national poverty levels declined steadily from 2006 through 2008. In addition, the project took a heavy toll on local ecosystems with three major oil spills occurring within the first 15 months of construction.

Local governments unprepared for influx of funds

Peru embarked on a substantial decentralization process in 2002, handing more political and fiscal control to sub-national governments. This meant that provincial and district governments in the vicinity of the project were unprepared, only two years later, either to manage the significant social and environmental risks associated with a major gas pipeline or to effectively deploy the massive revenues generated.

Peru: Camisea Pipeline Path and Poverty

Against this backdrop, People, Power and Pipelines analyzed the experience of sub-national government in the Cusco region in managing the natural gas project’s impact and associated revenues between 2005 and 2007, researching public records and conducting interviews with key players. The report’s findings highlight five challenges, stemming largely from weaknesses in sub-national planning and capacity, which may provide an instructive lesson for similar situations in other countries and sectors.

Significant surplus revenues were carried over from year to year by sub-national Governments, without applying an investment strategy. This resulted in missed opportunities to gain returns on these funds, address the risks of oil price volatility and to prepare for the eventual decrease in gas revenues.
While institutions, procedures and plans for fiscal management were in place, interviews with municipal officials suggested that these were rarely used in day to day administration.
A lack of strategic planning hindered municipal governments’ ability to coordinate large land use projects, plan for the future, and manage the impacts of infrastructure expansion in environmentally and socially sensitive regions. For example, a road was built through the Megantoni National Sanctuary without assessments of impacts on the local environment or on indigenous populations.
Visible investments, such as roads and buildings, were favored over less visible investments that would enhance social capital such as health, education, and agriculture.
Public access to information on how gas revenues were being used was limited and insufficient for citizens to hold government accountable.

Lessons for REDD Revenues

Peru’s experiences from the Camisea project could prove instructive for REDD as the international community ramps up efforts to provide a financial compensation mechanism for developing country actions to reduce emissions from forest loss. Although funding for REDD will likely take different forms, a frontrunner option is to link it to carbon markets in developed countries. Companies would then meet their emission reduction commitments by channeling funding to REDD projects in forest-rich countries.

If REDD does not work as intended, its failure could not only undermine climate reduction goals in developed countries but also inflict a new kind of resource curse on developing nations.

Like Camisea, and extractive projects more broadly, carbon markets would generate funding for poor, but natural- resource- rich, nations, at a scale rarely seen before. There is a risk, though. If REDD does not work as intended, its failure could not only undermine climate reduction goals in developed countries but also inflict a new kind of resource curse on developing nations.

Drawing on Peru’s Camisea experience, international financial institutions and others designing REDD should therefore:

Withhold access to carbon markets until in-country governance and capacity is sufficient to manage the scale up of funds. Indicators developed by WRI’s Governance of Forests Initiative (GFI), for example, can be used to assess the strengths and weaknesses of forest governance in a given country.
Support sub-national capacity building for long-term strategic planning and programs that strengthen transparency and accountability mechanisms for tracking revenues and expenditures in areas where REDD funds are channeled.
Draw on and adapt best practices from successful extractive industry projects to avoid known pitfalls.

Above all, careful sequencing of governance and capacity building should be employed before scaling up revenue flows. This will help ensure that urgently needed REDD and extractive industry payments are used in a way that generates long term development benefits, especially for the poor. It will create incentives for strengthening developing country governance and capacity. And it will help architects of REDD avoid inflicting a new “REDD resource curse” on nations whose wealth lies in forests.

Linnea Laestadius is an intern with the Office of the Vice President for Science and Research at WRI. She is a PhD student in Health and Public Policy and a CLF Farming the Future Fellow at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Forests, Climate Change and the Challenge of REDD

Manish Bapna — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 07:59:17 -0500

To combat global warming, forests must be part of the solution. How can we make good forest stewardship a reality?

2010 is a crucial year for forests. In March, major donor countries and forest-rich countries will meet in Paris, Nairobi and Manila, each grappling with the same question: how can efforts to reduce deforestation also help tackle climate change? Their decisions, and those following in the next six to twelve months, could channel substantial amounts of money to protect forests. Manish Bapna, Managing Director of the World Resources Institute, answers questions about the current window of opportunity to address both forest loss and climate change, and what is at stake in getting these mechanisms right.

Why are forests important in efforts to tackle climate change?

Forests are one of the greatest environmental challenges—and opportunities—facing the world in the 21st century. Forests are well known for their ability to absorb carbon dioxide, but when they are destroyed they release CO2 into the air. This helps explain why Indonesia, a developing country with high rates of deforestation, now has one of the highest emissions rates in the world.

Forest loss contributes as much as 12-15% to annual greenhouse gas emissions, about the same as the entire global transportation sector. It will be practically impossible to avoid dangerous climate change without addressing this problem. That is why forests must be part of the solution.

What is REDD?

REDD stands for “reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation.” A REDD mechanism would seek to provide incentives for developing countries to make those reductions. Right now, forest areas are often worth more harvested than left standing. At its core, REDD aims to change incentive structures in favor of protecting forests.

A REDD mechanism could provide compensation to governments, communities, companies or individuals if they have taken actions to reduce emissions from forest loss below an established reference level. The sustainable management of forests then becomes a smart economic decision, as well as a smart decision for the environment.

Although funding towards REDD will likely take many different forms, one option that is often discussed is to link REDD to carbon markets in developed countries. Companies could then meet their emission reduction commitments by channeling funding to REDD in forest-rich countries. Carbon markets would generate significant funding for REDD – at a scale rarely seen before. There is a risk, though. If REDD does not work as intended, its failure could reduce or even eliminate reduction efforts in developed countries.

What makes REDD so challenging?

In Copenhagen, countries agreed to the “immediate establishment of a mechanism including REDD-plus” to tackle emissions from deforestation. What this means in practice, though, has not been entirely clear. The idea of supporting countries to protect their forests sounds simple. But governments have only limited control over many of the drivers of deforestation. There are a number of difficult questions that have yet to be fully answered.

How do you ensure that REDD leads to emissions reductions that are “real and additional,” meaning they would not have happened without a REDD program?
How do you know that reducing deforestation in one place will not cause increased deforestation in another? This is what is called “leakage.”
How do you know that REDD will not just be a temporary fix, but rather will protect forests permanently?
How do you ensure that REDD will not adversely impact the rights and livelihoods of the millions of people who live in or around forests, especially in poorly governed states?
How do you measure, report and verify emission reductions from forests? This is especially challenging for measuring reductions in forest degradation.

These are just a few of the questions that arise, and they do not have easy answers. This helps explain why the possible mechanisms for achieving REDD have aroused such debate.

Why is good governance of forests important?

Money on its own cannot solve the deforestation challenge. History has proven this point time and time again.

Deforestation is as much an issue of poor forest governance – the processes, policies, and laws by which decisions that impact forests are made – as it is an issue of misaligned economic incentives. When you look at the main drivers of deforestation, such as agricultural expansion, logging, and infrastructure development, they are often symptoms of a larger failure of governance. Many forest-rich countries do not have strong enough institutions and processes needed to value and protect forests and people who depend on them. They will not be able to manage their forests until these factors improve.

REDD cannot be removed from this context. Without effective governance, money distributed through REDD could lead to some of the perverse outcomes I mentioned before. This issue could be further complicated by carbon markets because of the significant additional funding such markets could unleash. It could lead to a kind of “resource curse,” in which large inflows of funding can actually fuel corruption and bad governance. That’s why any approach to reducing deforestation, including a REDD mechanism, has to promote and support improvements in forest governance if it is to be successful.

How do we improve forest governance?

We must start with an understanding of what makes for good governance of forests. This is a question that WRI has grappled with over the past two years. We have developed a methodology, called the Governance of Forests Initiative (GFI) indicator framework that can help governments, civil society and other stakeholders assess the strengths and weaknesses of forest governance in their countries. This type of diagnostic can serve as a starting point for reform, uniquely tailored to each country.

Going forward, international efforts must focus on supporting developing countries to strengthen forest-related institutions, build participatory processes, and ensure proper social and environmental safeguards are in place.

Why is 2010 proving to be such an important year for forests?

The stakes are high this year. We are going to see how US climate legislation moves forward and how it incorporates REDD. The European Union will decide whether to include REDD in the next phase of its emissions trading scheme. Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change will decide how to ultimately operationalize REDD in a global climate deal. These decisions are going to shape global efforts to protect forests. 2010 is the year in which the momentum to address the interlinked challenges of forest loss and global warming can either lead to real change or fade away.

Can Climate Action Resuscitate Tropical Forests?

Janet Ranganathan — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 15:21:45 -0500

To be successful, money pledged to protect forests must tackle the underlying drivers of deforestation.

For decades, environmentalists have described shrinking forests as the planet’s “green lungs”. In Copenhagen, governments appeared to agree when they offered life support to preserve carbon-trapping tropical forests in the form of a major cash infusion. But can pumping money into forests save the climate? And can climate protection measures preserve beleaguered forests?

Each year about 13 million hectares of the world’s forests are lost due to deforestation, an area the size of Greece. This has serious implications for the forest-dependent poor, the world’s biodiversity, and climate change. Deforestation is responsible for about 13% of current global greenhouse gas emissions. The $3.5 billion pledge by the United States and five other countries to help developing countries protect forests as part of a new international climate protection agreement is the single largest proposed investment ever made in sustaining forests. But to be successful this money must tackle the underlying drivers of deforestation.

The culprits in tropical forest destruction are multiple and complex, but two stand out– misaligned economic incentives and weak forest governance, meaning the processes, policies, and laws by which forest management decisions are made. Historically it has been challenging to gauge the impact of efforts to reverse these drivers and the resulting consequences for forest health. In particular, reliable up-to-date spatial information on forest cover has been lacking. Such limited transparency was a major reason why efforts to curb forest loss in the 1980’s under the UN-led Tropical Forest Action Plan largely failed.

Today’s technologies can help solve this problem. Widely available remote sensing technologies can measure tree cover change down to a size as small as a football field. The World Resources Institute (WRI) has been working with partners at the South Dakota State University to use MODIS and Landsat satellite imagery to track, in a consistent manner, how forests are changing around the globe. By scaling up and combining such world-class expertise with local capacity-building efforts in developing nations, such information can provide the much needed checks and balances to spur improvements in forest management and governance.

In Indonesia, for example, WRI has been working with the Ministry of Forestry and civil society organizations to introduce some of these novel approaches and combine them with local knowledge to accurately assess forest change on an annual basis. In the Congo Basin, WRI is strengthening local capacity to estimate deforestation and degradation accurately and building local organizations to serve as training centers on the use of remote sensing information.

Progress is also being made in the tricky area of developing indicators to measure the quality of forest governance—including transparency, participation, accountability, coordination and capacity. In Cameroon, for example, providing transparency on forest concessions, logging roads and forest cover change has helped reduce illegal logging by increasing pressure on public officials to enforce regulations and by providing information to wood product purchasers on logging companies violating laws.

Like anyone else, decision makers responsible for forest management are more likely to do the right thing if they know their work is being assessed and watched. At the same time greater forest transparency and accountability can provide confidence to investors in forest conservation (both industrialized country taxpayers and private capital) that their money is hitting its mark.

Imagine if we were able to provide regular independent report cards on forest health and governance in all the countries that will be recipients of the $3.5 billion climate forest fund? Such an approach is already starting to emerge. But we need to thread the pieces together and create an independent global forest monitoring network involving NGOs, research institutes and others, capable of integrating remote sensing information with locally collected information on forest health and governance. It must also include a well informed civil society at the local level capable of using the information to hold business and policy makers in their countries accountable for how they manage forests.

Then the lifeline thrown this week into Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) will have a real chance of improving the health of both the world’s forests and its climate.

Progress on Amazonian Deforestation and Land Reform

Kaleigh Robinson — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 17:02:07 -0400

President Lula’s targeted vetoes to controversial but landmark legislation mark significant progress towards protecting the Amazon forest.

The bill considered by many to be Brazil’s most important environmental effort in years got a significant boost when President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signed the measure while vetoing several of its most controversial measures.

Provisory Measure 458 will privatize 67.4 million hectares of public land—an area about the size of France—currently occupied illegally in the Brazilian Amazon. Under the new bill, those unlawfully occupying lands of up to 1,500 hectares could receive legal title to such property if they meet certain conditions, including having peacefully obtained the land and keeping it in productive use.

The original intent of the legislation was to sort out a murky, convoluted system of tenure, in which a mere 14% of land claims are estimated to be backed by legitimate title, with the rest supported by counterfeit documentation or simply right of settlement.

“Land regularisation is of fundamental importance for halting deforestation,” says Carlos Minc, Brazil’s current environment minister. As Brazil presently lacks the resources to prevent illegal logging on much of the publicly-owned land covered by the measure, supporters of the legislation argue that the bill will decrease deforestation because legally owned, titled land will be better managed than commonly owned areas, and because all private landholders must comply with another Brazilian law requiring them to maintain 80% of their land forested.

On the other hand, critics of the measure, some even dubbing it “the land grab bill,” contend that the government will be granting legal tenure to grilheiros, those who stole and now occupy land through unlawful and often violent means. With many parts of the region lying beyond the reach of legitimate law enforcement, it may very well be impossible to prove whether land was acquired peacefully or violently.

Lula’s veto

Environmentalists have praised President Lula for vetoing two especially controversial parts of the bill. The vetoes effectively prevent the transfer of public lands in the area to businesses and other legal entities, and prohibit the granting of titles to absentee landholders. Lula’s vetoes will help distinguish small family farms, which account for the majority of land occupation and economic activity in the region, from the big businesses and non-resident land grabbers. The latter two groups are frequently responsible for increased deforestation and resulting greenhouse gas emissions that become part of the estimated 72% of Brazil’s total emissions profile attributed to agricultural and forestry. Lula commented that he had exercised his veto to preserve the original objectives of the measure in the interest of the Brazilian public. “We want to be an example to the world in taking care of our own things,” he said.

Provisory Measure 458 still contains other highly controversial provisions—in particular, a clause that favors the sale of large land plots over small ones (which could lead to speculation), and another that could favor current land occupants over those previously granted titles. While many remain upset that Lula did not veto these and other controversial elements, the President’s action nonetheless demonstrates a federal government that is giving higher priority to environmental concerns than it was previously.