ASB News and Events
The latest on land use, livelihoods and environmental services in the tropical forest margins.
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Reducing Emissions from All Land Uses (REALU) Workshop in Vietnam
By Rhiannon Crowe and Hoang Minh Ha, ICRAF – Vietnam
On November 4, 2009 the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) Vietnam, together with the General Department of Land Administration (GDLA) of the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (MONRE) organized a consultation workshop on Reducing Emissions from All Land Uses (REALU). This workshop is one of the activities in Vietnam for the NORAD funded ASB-ICRAF project from July 2009 – July 2010.
The objectives of the workshop were to: (i) develop a common understanding of the REALU project concept; (ii) discuss the initial findings by REALU Vietnam team on analysis, strategy and policy development for Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD).in relation to all land uses in Vietnam landscape. The outputs of REALU will contribute to the climate change policy framework in the lead-up to Copenhagen in December 2009.
The REALU Architecture project will link knowledge with action by (i) providing analyses of cross-sectoral linkages in the tropical forest margins, based on long term engagement in Asia, Africa and Latin America, (ii) organizing multi-stakeholder events to explore implications for the design of an effective regime in the post-2012 context, and (iii) building the scientific and political basis for change through communicating and networking activities.
The goal of the project is to strengthen the ability of developing countries to build and implement effective strategies for reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) within a context of rural development, national sovereignty, respect for local and indigenous peoples’ rights and integrity of national and global greenhouse gas accounting systems.
In the half day workshop, 25 participants from international and national governments and NGOs in Vietnam listened to four presentations of experts from ICRAF, GDLA, and Sustainable Forest Management Institute (SFMI). The topics covered were (i) Introduction of REALU and concepts RED, REDD, REDD+ and REALU; (ii) Land use and emission – a cross-sectoral perspective; (iii) Opportunity costs Analysis, and (iv) SFM and REDD+. During the discussion sections, the participants talked about the readiness of RED, REDD, REDD+ and REDD++ in Vietnam.
In the afternoon, REALU Vietnam experts groups (GDLA, SFMI, ICRAF, SNV) met to discuss the findings from the morning sessions and will use these comments to improve their report and products to deliver at at the upcoming UNFCCC Conference of Parties in Copenhagen (COP 15).
There was much interest and participation at the workshop. All of the attendees provided useful and practical feedback for REDD and REALU mechanisms that can be used in moving forward in Vietnam. Encouragingly, at the end of the day, one SNV international expert said ‘we believe ICRAF is doing some excellent work in this area’.
If we cannot define it, we cannot save it: defining Forests for REDD success
The definition of “forest” could become a major bottleneck in the implementation of a climate agreement. The progression of concepts — from RED to REDD to REDD+ to REDD++ — reflects a tendency to include a larger share of total land-use change. The logical end point is to account for all land use: Reducing Emissions from Any Land Use (or across all land uses) or REALU. This is equivalent to taking account of emisisons from Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Uses (AFOLU). A comprehensive whole-landscape approach can likely incorporate trees outside forests, agroforestry systems and community-based forest management.
Source: van Noordwijk M and Minang PA. 2009. “If we cannot define it, we cannot save it”. European Tropical Forest Research Network (ETFRN) NEWS 50: Forests and Climate Change. November 2009. Tropenbos International, Wageningen, The Netherlands. Available at: http://www.etfrn.org/etfrn/newsletter/news50/index.html
African nations make a stand at UN climate talks
The move by developing countries reflects their deep and growing frustration over the slow progress that industrialised countries are making towards agreeing cuts. With less than three days full negotiating time left between now and the opening of the final talks at Copenhagen, the split between rich and poor countries threatens to blow the talks fatally off course.
In a press conference, the poorest countries demanded that the rich adopt the science-backed target of a 40% overall cut on emissions on 1990 levels. So far, rich countries have pledged an aggregate of less than 10%. The US, the world’s second biggest polluter, has pledged to cut around 4% on 1990 levels, or 17% on 2005 levels.
Not ready for REDD? – SciDev.Net
Practicalities of trading carbon and protecting forests make meeting high expectations for REDD hard, say Esteve Corbera and Manuel Estrada in an article on SciDev.net. A REDD deal will need to take account some of the challenges that developing country governments and project developers face for implementing successful REDD projects. These include pre-financing, certification of real emission reductions (also known as Monitoring, Reporting and Verification, MRV), understanding the real drivers of deforestation, and local capacity for implementing new forest management rules.
Read more: Not ready for REDD? – SciDev.Net.
Evidence base for Measuring and Assessing Forest Carbon
Scientists from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the University of Oxford and other institutions are working on a protocol for comparison of methods for the measurement and assessment of carbon stocks and carbon stock changes in terrestrial carbon pools. A draft protocol is now available to the public and is open to comments on the web site of Collaboration for Environmental Evidence. The review is assessing methods for carbon stock measurement in the five terrestrial carbon pools as identified by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC): above-ground biomass, below-ground biomass, deadwood, litter and soil.
Download the draft protocol (pdf).