Brazil's climate change chief says it's not simply a question of protecting forest people's rights
CANCUN, Mexico (AlertNet) – Efforts to protect the world's forests and cut emissions from deforestation need backing from the people who live and work there because the policies won't succeed without their buy-in, Brazil's climate change chief warned at this week's Cancun climate talks.
"It's very important we understand the importance of participation, (that it's) not only about respecting rights, though that's very important," said Thais Linhares-Juvenal, director for climate change at Brazil's Ministry of Environment, during a discussion on forest issues.
If forest residents "cannot understand the reasons we need to keep forests, they will not be able to collaborate (in the programmes)", she said, adding this will be a major factor in determining their effectiveness.
With efforts to pass a binding global climate treaty now set aside for at least a year, negotiators at this week's U.N. climate negotiations in Mexico are focusing instead on winning progress in a few key areas, including agreements on climate finance and on establishing rules for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD).
Forest-related carbon emissions account for at least 15 percent of the world's current annual greenhouse gas emissions, and curbing them is seen as a relatively low-cost and popular way of slowing climate change, not least because poor and rich nations both have something to gain.
Under REDD rules now being negotiated – and already being tested in places from Indonesia to Guyana and Brazil – rich countries would pay poorer nations with tropical forests to protect and maintain those forests as a way of curbing emissions. Rich nations could then count the emissions reductions toward their own carbon-cutting targets.
The initiative could see billions of dollars a year changing hands – Norway this year signed an early $1 billion REDD deal with Indonesia - fuelling fears it could worsen corruption in many countries, or lead to forest communities losing rights to traditional, and now highly valuable, forest land.
LEARNING FAST
Brazil, home to the world's largest rainforest, has more than 20 fledgling REDD programmes underway, Linhares-Juvenal said, and is quickly learning lessons about the challenges – everything from deadline pressures to the difficulties of getting indigenous groups involved in decision-making.
Under most Brazilian state law, for instance, public input must be sought on zoning decisions, including those governing forest use. But there is little guidance on how hearings should be held, and no clear way of tracing whether people's views are taken into account, according to Brenda Brito, executive director of Brazil's Institute for Man and the Environment in the Amazon (IMAZON).
Similarly, indigenous forest groups find it hard to influence national legislative decisions, she said, simply because they don't have money to catch a plane to Brasilia.
"Vulnerable groups' participation in the legislative process is very weak," she admitted.
She cited a case where the Matto Grosso state legislature spent two years holding 15 public hearings on a forest zoning bill – and then at the last moment dropped it and passed a different bill without public input.
Finding ways to involve everyone who needs to have a say "is the one million dollar question" for REDD, said Mauricio de Almeida Voivodic, a forest engineer with IMAFLOR, a non-profit Brazilian forest management and certification organisation.
INCENTIVES FOR ALL
Another key to success, Linhares-Juvenal said, is devising REDD plans with the right kind of incentives for everyone concerned, from indigenous forest groups and small forest land owners to politicians and loggers.
"That is what will make a REDD-plus strategy sustainable in the long term," she said, referring to an updated version of REDD which seeks to ensure local communities, not just national governments, get a voice in setting up programmes and a share of the funds they generate.
"It's important that we can build a balanced incentives framework that acknowledges not only progress in environmental functions but in all the functions of forests, including economic and social functions."
Achieving that would make monitoring and verifying that forests are being protected easier, she said.
Another difficulty facing REDD efforts in Brazil, Brito said, is potential land disputes. Her organisation estimates that 53 percent of the Amazon doesn't have any clear definition of land rights, which means "we have a challenge ahead" in trying to determine who controls land and who should receive a share of any payments under REDD-plus programmes.
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