Transcript Emerging Role of Community Forest Management in Reducing

Emerging Role of Community Forest
Management in Reducing Carbon
Emission ―Insights from Land Tenure
& REDD+ Nexus
Anar Koli
PhD candidate, University of Tsukuba
3rd November, 2010
Introduction
In spite of various debates, there is general consensus that
REDD+ initiatives are more likely to be effective in
reducing emission if they build on the interests of forest
communities.
Thus, Community Forest Management (CFM) is considered
to be a cost effective platform to reduce carbon emission
as well to enhance the forest benefits of the forest
dependent communities.
However, how and to what extent REDD/REDD+ can bring
the real opportunity to community forest users or how it
can be workable both for the carbon credit buyer and
local forest user still remain in debatable stage.
Objective of the Presentation
To what extent Community Forest
Management (CFM) can play its role in
global carbon mitigation ?
Why carbon payment may not ensure the
benefits of the marginal forest dependent
communities in Bangladesh?
Some Background Information
• Bangladesh in the climate change context
• REDD+ in the Bangladesh context
• Carbon payment based on the instrument
Payment of Environmental service (PES)
• Community Forest Management Paradigm
Bangladesh -in the context of climate
change
• With 0.15% of carbon emission, Bangladesh -one of the
most climate vulnerable countries
• Profound effects on the 1.5 billion people who presently
live in coastal areas
• 1 m rise in sea level by 2100; affecting 17.5% of total
land mass respectively (The World Bank 2000)
• About 40 million people of Bangladesh out of 144 million
will become environmental refugees due to 1-m sea level
rise (Earth Policy Institute 2004)
• Many of its ecosystems including forests especially the
coastal mangrove forests are already being heavily
affected from climate change, its associated hazards
5
Coastal zone of Bangladesh
6
REDD+ in the Context of
Bangladesh
•
•
•
REDD+ is policy approaches and positive incentives on issues relating to
reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing
countries; and the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests
and enhancement of forest carbon stocks in developing counties (UNFCCC
Decision 2/CP. 13-11)
A particular focus of this presentation is on the carbon payment of REDD+
which is based on the instrument of Payment of Ecosystems Services
(PES)
The core idea of this approach is that external environmental service
beneficiaries make direct, contractual and conditional payments to local
landholders and users in return for adopting practices that secure
ecosystem conservation and restoration (S. Wunder 2005)
Deforestation and Forest Degradation
situation of Bangladesh
• Bangladesh has 17% of the landmass designated as
forest but the statistics of FAO indicate that the actual
tree cover is estimated at around 10%
• During last ten years ending 1996, more than half of the
closed forests (medium to good density) have been
degraded to poor density forests (other forests).
• Area under plantations in Coastal Afforestation divisions
has declined by more than 25%.
• The protected area in two of the three wildlife
sanctuaries in Sunderbans has gone down (FAO, 2000)
Carbon Sequestration Aspects
of Bangladesh
•
Bangladesh has high floral diversity in the forests which have high
biomass and carbon density. It is estimated that more than 5000
species of higher plants available in Bangladesh.
• On average 92tC/ha is stored by the existing tree tissue in the forest
of Bangladesh (Mia et al (2007). The gross carbon content in the
forest indicates that Bangladesh has high capacity for carbon
sequestration.
• Sunderbans are the World`s largest mangrove swamps in
Bangladesh that are highly carbon sinks, hold large quantities of
carbon in standing biomass and in sediments. They can absorb and
store more carbon than they release.
• However, coastal and marine ecosystems still have not been
incorporated into the existing carbon revenue schemes
Contribution of CFM in
Forestation in Bangladesh
While state centric forest management fail to reduce the high
rate deforestation and forest degradation, CFM in Bangladesh
has significant contribution to enhance the forest coverage
• Around 10% of the forest lands in the deforested Chittagong
forest area have reforested under different participatory
aforestation and reforestation program.
• However, up to now, enlarging the area of forests (e.g.,
through afforestation and reforestation, A/R), is not part of
REDD+, A/R is part of Clean Development Mechanism
(CDM).
• Also community peoples have positive contribution in the biodiversity conservation and forest protection.
REDD+ and CFM Relation
• Involvement with REDD+, CFM can help sequester and store
carbon with simultaneously offering benefits to the community
• Community participation can increase the 3 Es+ such as
effectiveness, efficiency, equity and co-benefits and therefore
enhance the sustainability of the REDD+ initiatives (Agrawal and
Angelsen 2009)
• When the REDD+ scheme is emerging and its carbon payment
schemes is to be considered as a significant incentives, it is urgent
need to understand the challenging aspects like to land tenure
complexity, the local institutional capacity which are determinant
factors of its success.
• These institutional factors are challenging in the sense that without
solving these factors, they not only can pose the improvement of the
process but can bring further risks and vulnerability for the
marginalized forest community.
CFM paradigm
(Co-management of PAs)
•Devolution in forest
governance
•Decision making space
for marginalized
communities
•Equity in distribution of
access and benefits
Challenges or land
tenure
•Exclusion of
marginalized group
•resource and
access capture by
elite
REDD
/REDD+
Carbon
payment
scheme
Opportunity
-Achieve REDD goal
-Enhance forest benefit,
adaptive capacity of
FUG
-improvement of land
tenure security
Risks
-Further exclusion of
marginalized people
-Enhance domination of
local and political elite
-increasing vulnerability
-fail to achieve REDD
goal and increase
unsustainable extraction
Sustainable
response to
CC
Unsustaina
ble response
to CC
Fig1:The framework of the CFM and REDD+ nexus with land tenure
and their potential outcomes in response to climate change
I would like to focus this CFM-REDD+ nexus from Bangladesh
perspective based on two aspects.
• Land tenure security
• Local Institutional Capacity –this issue I focus from the field
survey on a protected areas –Chunoti wild life sactuary
(CWS) in 2010.
Chuntoti Wildlife Sanctuary (CWS)
One of most deforested and degraded areas in Bangladesh. It
was declared as protected area (PA) in 1986 to combat
deforestation.
From 2004 CFM in the form of state-community joint comanagement has been operating in this protected area.
Findings of field survey on CWS
Contribution of CFM in protecting forest health
• 87.5 of the respondent expressed that there is
significant positive changes in regard of the
forest health such as reducing deforestation,
forest degradation, enhancing bio-diversity
during the last several years and they have
active involvement to bring this change.
changes in forest health
100
80
60
40
20
0
Increase of the
forest protection
Increase of
animal & bird
Decrease of
illegal felling
Increase of
plantation
Overall
imrovement
% of respondent
Table 1: The contribution of Community Forest
Management in forest protection
Source: Field survey at Chutonoti Wildlife Sanctuary, Bangladesh in
2010
Local Institutional Capacity
• Type of involvement -co-management has brought some significant
changes in forest management; CFM become institutionalized and
forest communities have directly been included in the forest
governance process.
• Participation-Forest communities participate in the co-management
institution actively however they cannot influence the decision
making.
• Roles of the co-management committee vary in regard of the type of
work; like, participation is high in work plan preparation than that of
in the budget allocation discussion.
Decision making space of
marginalized forest communities
•
•
•
•
•
Elite group has strong position and the marginalized forest users remain marginalized
in the co-management committee and council. Marginalized forest users remain more
or less as observer.
The number of the representative of marginal group in the co-management institution
is disproportionate. The members from local elite group represents around 3 times
higher than that of the marginal groups.
Forest user groups have not been developed as formal institution or effective platform
even in the co-management arrangement.
Most of the key discussion and decisions are lead by the forest department, project
official and local elites.
The position of the women participants is worse; the total women member in the comanagement committee and council is only 4 and all of them are the member of the
Union Parisad (lowest tier of local government). The poor women forest users remain
the most marginalized one, they could not be included in the co-management
institution as members yet.
Land tenure situation
• Land tenure remain in an insecure and complicated
manner in all most all the resource management regime
• In the collective arrangement or any other community
oriented management mechanism, their land tenure is
not secure. Most of the cases, state control the
ownership and community have some property rights in
limited scale
• The community who are based on customary rights are
more vulnerable and their tenure is more insecure in
terms of ownership and tenure time.
Management type
State/gov. management
-Reserve forest
-protected forest/areas
Collective management
Afforestation in roadside,
coastal areas
Co-management
of
protected areas
Buffer zone CFM
Village forests
Ownership of land
State ownership
State ownership, sometimes
transfer
ownership
to
individual
The
state
transfers
management
rights
to
CFM/individual
but
ownership remain with the
state
Community management State ownership
(customary system)
Sometimes
resource
holding by clans, group or
individual
based
on
customary rights
Private management
-private forest land – Individual/collective
homestead gardening
ownership
Challenges for REDD+
Corruption and Rent seeking problem
Poor implementation & enforcement
capacity
No/limited mechanism for payment of
compensation or PES
Limited forest management rights to
forest communities
Elite capture/elite domination
Land rights may emerge as a key
discriminating factor for access the
REDD benefit
Complicated land rights
Encroachment problem
Marginalization of poor and ethnic forest
communities
Poor and marginalized people may be
excluded from land and resource rights
Table 2: Different forest management regimes and
their tenure and the related challenges for REDD+
Conflicts and exclusion based
on tenure insecurity
• Exclusion, confrontation and violent conflicts over forest resources
and land tenure security in the most two potential zone for REDD+
site; Chittagong Hill Tract (CHT) forest and the Madhupur Sal forest
Exclusion in CHT forest
• CHT forest- high concentration of ethnic minority groups historically
and they used to live on their traditional shifting cultivation.
• These ethnic communities suffered for their livelihood from the
insecure and complex tenure arrangement; 18.67 percent have
been evicted from their ancestors´ land in CHT
• In the early 1960s-about 100, 000 indigenous people were
displaced.
• In 1976 ‘resettlement of lowland people in CHT area’ and 1992
declaration of reserve forest or rubber plantation scheme displaced
a large number of the ethnic forest community from their own land
and resources.
Land tenure situation all around
the globe
• The experiences from the first generation REDD+
implementing countries like Bolivia, Cameroon,
Indonesia, Tanzania and Vietnam all show that the issue
of land tenure and participation all these are key issues
and key challenges ；however. to date there has been
little action on reforming the land tenure all through the
globe.
• A summery of resource rights situations of relevance of
REDD in the seven rainforest countries indicates that the
land tenure security and resource rights largely exist in
paper, in many cases not even in the paper. In practice
basically their level is low, in some case medium (Lorezo
Cotula and James Mayers 2009) .
Barzil
Camer
oon
DR
Congo
Guyan
a
Indone
sia
Malays
ia
PNG
Indigenous
peoples’
rights
protected?
Carbon
rights
defined and
addressed?
Local ‘voice’
in
land use
change
decisions?
Private
(individual
or
collective)
land and/or
tree
ownership
allowed?
On In
Pape Practi
r
ce
Yes Med
Local (incl.
‘customary’)
use
rights in
place and
recognized?
Benefit sharing
and
revenueallocation
arrangements?
On
Pape
r
Yes
In
On
Practi Paper
ce
Med Yes
In
Practi
ce
Med
On
Pape
r
No
In
On
Practi Paper
ce
Low Yes
In
On
Practic Paper
e
Low
Yes
Support for
local resource
rights –
through
institutional
responsibiliti
es and
capabilities?
In
On
In
Practi Paper Practi
ce
ce
Med Yes
Med
Yes
Low
Yes
Low
No
Low
No
Low
Yes
Low
Yes
Med
Yes
Med
Yes
Low
Yes
Low
No
Low
No
Low
Yes
Low
Yes
Low
Yes
Low
Yes
Low
Yes
Med
Yes
Low
No
Low
No
Low
Yes
Low
Yes
Low
Yes
Low
Yes
Low
No
Low
No
Low
Yes
Low
Yes
Med
Yes
Med
Yes
Med
Yes
Med
Yes
Low
No
Low
Yes
Med
Yes
Med
Yes
Med
Med
Yes
High
Yes
Med
No
Low
Yes
High
Yes
Med
Yes
Low
Table 3: Key indicators of insecurity of local resource rights for
REDD and related mechanisms in seven rainforest countries.
Source: Cotula, L. and Mayers, J. 2009.
Conclusion : Opportunities Vs
Risks
• Is a scenario all together pessimistic? I argue, no; but the relation of
REDD+, CFM and land tenure is not simple rather complex.
• The relation REDD+ and CFM are conditional and two of the key
conditional aspects are tenure security and local institutional
capacity .
• This land tenure security challenge put this relation as a double
sword dimension. If the tenure security problem can be solved then
it can brings a wider opportunity both for the forest communities
REDD+ initiatives. But if the tenure situation remain same or get
worse then it would not only exclude the marginalize community, it
can create conflicts and further vulnerability.
• In a carbon governance model thus this very local issue should get
priority as it affects the global level outcomes
• This challenging situation can be driver for better carbon
governance and resource rights for marginalized community.