Report warns of ways climate change threatens food security of urban poor

Policies to increase food security in the global South focus too much on rural food production and not enough on ensuring poor people can access and afford food, especially in urban areas, says a report published today by the International Institute for Environment and Development.

It warns that climate change will only make this policy gap worse, because climate change impacts will affect not only harvests but also the systems that people use to transport, store and buy and sell food.

“Food security is back on the agenda thanks to rising prices and the threat that climate change poses to agricultural production,” says the report’s author Dr Cecilia Tacoli. “But policies that focus on rural food production alone will not tackle the rising food insecurity in urban areas. We also need policies that improve poor people’s ability to access and afford food, especially in urban areas.”

Most people in urban areas must buy their food and this makes the urban poor particularly at risk. Any climate-induced disruption to food production, transport and storage – either in the urban area itself or in distant farmland – can affect food supplies and prices in urban areas.

Yet most policies that aim to increase food security focus solely on boosting production from farms and fisheries in rural areas.

“The journey that food takes from a rural producer to an urban consumer involves many steps,” says Dr Tacoli. “It must travel through formal and informal systems as it is stored, distributed and sold. Each one of these steps is a point of potential vulnerability to climate change. For consumers, this will mean sharp and sudden increases in food prices”

The report highlights the link between income poverty and food insecurity in urban areas. For most low-income urban citizens food represents a sizeable portion of the money they spend. Even small increases in price would therefore have big impacts of food security, with citizens reducing the amount and quality of the food they buy.

For the residents of informal urban settlements, food insecurity is also the consequence of lack of space to store and cook food, lack of time to shop and prepare meals, inadequate access to clean water and often non-existing sewage systems. These settlements are disproportionately affected by floods, typhoons, heat waves and other impacts of climate change because they tend to be located in areas more exposed to these events, and because they lack the most basic infrastructure.

Tacoli says that governments must rise to these challenges by ensuring that policies can protect the urban poor from food insecurity linked to rising prices, inadequate living conditions and the effects of climate change in both rural and urban areas. Decent and stable employment is essential but not sufficient: adequate infrastructure and housing and access to formal and informal markets are just as important.  

“Climate change threatens to multiply many of the big challenges that face the world’s urban poor,” says Tacoli. “Policymakers need a far better understanding of what it means to be poor in an urban centre.”

BILL'S EXCELLENT AFRICAN ADVENTURE: A TALE OF TECHNOCRATIC AGROINDUSTRIAL PHILANTHROCAPITALISM

By Phil Bereano

Bill Gates

                                                           

From 2009 to 2011, Bill Gates' foundation spent $478,302,627 to influence African agricultural development. Adding in the value of agricultural grants going to multiple regions and those for 2012, the Foundation's outlay to influence African agriculture is around $1 billion. Of course, Gates is not an African, not a scholar of Africa, not a farmer, and not a development expert. But he is a very rich man, and he knows how he wants to remake the world.

Gates' support for ag development strategies favors industrial, high-tech, capitalist market approaches. In particular, his support for genetically engineered crops as a solution for world hunger is of concern to those of us - in Africa and the U.S. - involved in promoting sustainable, equitable agricultural policies.

First, his technocratic ideology runs counter to the best informed science. The World Bank and the UN funded 400 scientists, over three years, to compile the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD). Its conclusions in 2009 were diametrically opposed, at both philosophical and practical levels, to those espoused by Gates. It recommended research that "would focus on local priorities identified through participatory and transparent processes, and favor multifunctional solutions to local problems," and it concluded that biotechnology alone will not solve the food needs of Africa.

The IAASTD suggests that rather than pursuing industrial farming models, "agro-ecological" methods provide the most viable, proven, and reliable means to enhance global food security, especially in light of climate change. These include implementing practical scientific research based on traditional ecological approaches, so farmers avoid disrupting the natural carbon, nitrogen and water cycles, as conventional agriculture has done.

Olivier De Shutter, the UN's Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, reinforces the IAASTD research. He too concludes that agro-ecological farming has far greater potential for fighting hunger, particularly during economic and climatically uncertain times.

Agroecological practices have consistently proven capable of sustainably increasing productivity. Conversely, the present GM crops, based on industrial agriculture, generally have not increased yields over the long run, despite their increased input costs and dependence. The Union of Concerned Scientists details GM crops' underperformance in their 2009 report, "Failure to Yield."1
Second, Gates funds African front groups whose work with Monsanto and other multinational agricultural corporations directly undermines existing grassroots efforts at improving African agricultural production. Gates has become a stalking horse for corporate proponents promoting industrial agricultural paradigms, which view African hunger simply as a business opportunity. His foundation has referred to the world's poor as presenting "a fast growing consumer market." Referring to the world's poor as "BOP" (the bottom of the pyramid), he insists they must be subsumed into a global capitalist system, one which has done so well to enrich him. His philanthropy is really "philanthrocapitalism."

By and large, Gates' grants do not support locally defined priorities, they do not fit within the holistic approach urged by many development experts, and they do not investigate the long-term effectiveness and risks of genetic modification. The choice of a high-risk, high-tech project over more modest but effective agricultural techniques is problematic, offering no practical solutions for the present and near-future concerns of the people who run small farms.
For example, the Gates Foundation touted a $10 million  grant to Conservation International  in 2012 as "agroecological," an important concept emerging as a touchstone criterion for assessing development assistance. Using the guidelines that Miguel Altieri has laid down, it consists of "broad performance criteria which includes properties of ecological sustainability, food security, economic viability, resource conservation and social equity, as well as increased production. . . . To attain this understanding agriculture must be conceived of as an ecological system as well as a human dominated socio-economic system."2 This goes far beyond the definition used, for example, by the OECD as "the study of the relation of agricultural crops and environment." In other words, in addition to embodying the idea of sustainability, agroecology includes principles of democracy.
However, the Conservation International grant is merely a program of monitoring what is happening on the ground in African agriculture. The Foundation's press release describes it as:

(Providing) tools to ensure that agricultural development does not degrade natural systems and the services they provide, especially for smallholder farmers. It will also fill a critical unmet need for integrating measurements of agriculture, ecosystem services and human well-being by pooling near real-time and multi-scale data into an open-access online dashboard that policy makers will be able to freely use and customize to inform smart decision making. The raw data will be fully accessible and synthesized into six simple holistic indicators that communicate diagnostic information about complex agro-ecosystems, such as: availability of clean water, the resilience of crop production to climate variability or the resilience of ecosystem services and livelihoods to changes in the agricultural system.

 

This is really a top-down technocratic program, hardly qualifying as agroecological. In fact, while it might be a beneficial activity, it could be used as a perfect illustration of trying to use an appealing label to whitewash its opposite. A Gates official claims that it will be "for decision-makers," but these users appear to be hierarchical elites, not smallholders-who are unlikely to have "an open-access online dashboard" in their fields.

Genetically modified crops are also supported by the Gates Foundation, although they threaten conventional and organic production as well as the autonomy of African producers and nations. In 2002, Emmy Simmons, then-assistant administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, stated that "in four years, enough (genetically engineered) crops will have been planted in South Africa that the pollen will have contaminated the entire continent." Biotechnology cannot coexist with agro-ecological techniques and traditional knowledge.

Mariam Mayet of the African Centre for Biosafety said of the Gates Foundation grant, "(Genetically modified) nitrogen-fixing crops are not the answer to improving the fertility of Africa's soils. African farmers are the last people to be asked about such projects. This often results in the wrong technologies being developed, which many farmers simply cannot afford."

She said farmers need ways to build up resilient soils that are both fertile and adaptable to extreme weather. "We also want our knowledge and skills to be respected and not to have inappropriate solutions imposed on us by distant institutions, charitable bodies or governments," Mayet said.
While successful in his chosen field, Gates has no expertise in the farm field. This is not to say that he and his fellow philanthropists cannot contribute - they certainly can. However, some circumspection and humility would go a long way to heal the rifts they have opened. African farmers never asked to be beaten with the big stick of high-input proprietary technology; doing so continues neo-imperialism and the perpetuation of foreign-imposed African "failure." Africans urge Bill Gates to engage with them in a more broadly consultative, agroecological approach.

Phil Bereano, JD, is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Washington and a co-founder of the Council for Responsible Genetics. This essay is based on work he and other researchers have done for AGRA Watch, a project of Seattle's Community Alliance for Global Justice (http://www.seattleglobaljustice.org)

THINK-TANK ALLIANCE IDENTIFIES EIGHT SHIFTS NEEDED FOR SUSTAINABILITY

 

A new international alliance of research institutes has identified eight major shifts that must take place for humanity to achieve sustainable development.

The recommendations come in a paper published today by the Independent Research Forum on a Post-2015 Sustainable Development Agenda, whose members include IIED and other think tanks in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Europe, North America and South America.

The research institutes joined forces to provide expert analysis to inform the on-going international policy processes that will shape both the Sustainable Development Goals (which nations agreed to create at the Rio+20 Summit last year) and the ‘post-2015’ development agenda, which is set to replace the Millennium Development Goals.

 

The new paper says that sustainable development can only be achieved if four foundations exist:

·         Economic progress

·         Equitable prosperity and opportunity

·         Healthy and productive ecosystems

·         Stakeholder engagement and collaboration

 

But first, says the Independent Research Forum, eight shifts will be essential.

·         From ‘development assistance’ to a universal global compact.

·         From top-down to multi-stakeholder decision-making processes.

·         From economic models that increase inequalities and risks to ones that reduce them.

·         From business models based on shareholder value to those based on stakeholder value.

·         From meeting ‘easy’ development targets to tackling systemic barriers to progress.

·         From damage control to investing in resilience.

·         From concepts and testing to scaled up interventions.

·         From multiple discrete actions to cross-scale coordination.

The paper describes each of these shifts in more detail and then outlines the Independent Research Forum’s recommendation for how policymakers should set the goals and targets that will make up the post-2015 development agenda.

"This has been a joint effort by 12 think tanks from around the world, and we are very happy with the result," says Dr Tom Bigg of IIED. "We believe this framework will be useful to all those charged with agreeing a coherent set of goals that meet the challenges the world is facing."

"The Independent Research Forum will continue to engage with the post-2015 process over the next two years. As a first step we plan to release a series of more focused papers which apply our framework to particular policy contexts," says Bigg. "These will demonstrate its value as a means of organising thinking and action across the range of issues relevant to the post-2015 discourse."

 

Future papers will focus on specific sectors – such as water, agriculture, energy and urbanisation.

 

China in Africa: New Forum Seeks Sustainable, Pro-poor Forestry

A new forum will launch on 5-6 March to help ensure Chinese investments in African forests have positive outcomes for local livelihoods and sustainability.

The China-Africa Forest Governance Learning Platform was developed by the Forest Governance Learning Group (FGLG), an international alliance that promotes policymaking that serves forest-dependent communities and sustainability. It will enable policy researchers and forest specialists from Africa and China to share information on issues such as forestry investment, timber supply chains and forest-linked livelihoods.

The FGLG developed the platform in partnership with the Chinese Academy of Forestry and Beijing-based Global Environmental Institute, which together with IIED will host the launch event in Beijing next week.

 At the launch, the platform partners will also present and discuss new research, which IIED will publish later this year, about Chinese impacts and influence on decision making about forests in Africa.

China’s imports of African timber and investments in land use in forest areas are both increasing, and China is now the top importer of timber from several African nations. Yet information about the positive and negative impacts of these trends is often weak or inaccessible.

The research shows that whilst some Chinese companies comply with corporate social responsibility requirements and contribute to the welfare of local communities, others fail to compensate rights-holding communities adequately for access to forest land, and illegally and excessively exploit forest resources.

The research explored the way Chinese government agencies and banks not only encourage investment in Africa, but also regulate and supervise Chinese business activities there. While this shows commitment to environmental regulation, more details on implementation, legally binding requirements and concerted enforcement will be needed to improve the governance of forests and livelihoods in Africa.

For example, there are no effective regulatory measures to verify imported timber in terms of its legality and sustainability, or to assess the impacts on sourcing countries. Nor does public procurement policy specify any requirements for imported timber.

In reviewing stakeholder perceptions about the effects of Chinese investment on forests and livelihoods in Africa, the researchers found that government and civil society respondents in Africa have generally negative perceptions while those in China have broadly positive perceptions. With relationships between African and Chinese researchers and opinion formers being weak, the review concludes that the forest governance learning platform is sorely needed. 

“Getting forest governance right is hard enough at a local or national level,” says James Mayers, head of IIED’s natural resources group and facilitator of FGLG. “The challenges become immense when investment paths and supply chains stretch across the globe. But the current growth in Chinese investments in African forests also brings great opportunities for policymakers to ensure that benefits reach local communities and boost the sustainability of African forestry.”

At the first meeting of the platform speakers will discuss issues that include:

·        Chinese forest policy in relation to the timber trade and investment in Africa

·        Forest development trends, challenges and livelihoods in Africa in relation to links with China

·        The role of participatory forestry in reducing poverty in China, and its significance for China-Africa forest governance

·        China’s efforts in addressing socio-ecological impacts of its overseas forest investment and trade  

“There is immense misunderstanding about the nature of Chinese investments and trade with African countries,” says Lila Buckley of IIED. “This platform aims to create links between actors on both sides, provide clear information about the nature of these engagements, and identify where there are gaps in policy and research so that better decision-making is possible.”

 

LEADING SCIENTISTS, POLICY MAKERS, PRIVATE SECTOR, AND DONORS IN THE BIOSCIENCES INNOVATIONS ARENA MEET IN ADDIS ABABA FOR THE 1ST BIO-INNOVATE REGIONAL SCIENTIFIC CONFERENCE

Participants Highlight Successes and Challenges in employing Biosciences Innovations for Socio-Economic Transformation in Eastern Africa.

More than 150 scientists, policy makers, the private sector, donors, and other stakeholders gathered in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on Monday for the launch of the 1^st Bio-Innovate Regional Scientific Research Conference at the United Nations Conference Centre, Economic Commission for Africa (UNCC-ECA) from 25-27 February 2013.

The conference aims to share the successes and challenges of implementing Bio-Innovate’s activities in the eastern Africa region. Organizers say these activities present extraordinary opportunities for a knowledge-based bio-economy in sub-Saharan Africa.

Among the dignitaries who participated in Monday’s opening ceremony were: Gity Brehravan the First Secretary, Regional Research Cooperation at the Embassy of Sweden in Nairobi; Carlos Lopes, Secretary General, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA); Jimmy Smith, Diretor General of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), and Aggrey Ambali, Director, Policy Alignment and Program Development, AU/NEPAD Agency among others.

Bio-Innovate is providing a novel regional, broad-based biosciences innovation platform that links science, technology and innovation to the marketplace to address urgent regional development challenges.  Those challenges include increasing food insecurity, climate change problems exacerbated by disposal of harmful agro-industrial wastewater and the need to promote value addition in traditional crops. Bio-Innovate research also supports the adoption of disease and drought-resistant varieties of orphan crops like sorghum and millet. The Program is also attempting to facilitate a policy environment that is more receptive to innovation and proactive about incorporating research into development policy.

In his opening remarks, Bio-Innovate Program Manager Dr. Seyoum Leta extolled the abundant potential for harnessing bio-resources within East Africa, through the use of biosciences innovation and research. This is illustrated by the increased focus by national governments and donors focusing on science, technology and innovation (STI). The region and the continent in general are collaborating on development agendas within regional policy bodies including the New Partnerships for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), Project ICAD (Informing Climate Adaptation Decisions) and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, where this week’s conference is taking place.

However, Leta also cautioned about what he called “The Missing Link” in the path to impact.

“Capacities in biosciences in various sectors are scarce and scattered, with few strong regional initiatives,” Leta said. “The research and development networks comprised of local institutions, regional and international research organizations have little effect in linking with private sectors to use modern biosciences as a tool for development.

The Bio-Innovate Program was launched in 2010 to directly address this lack of organized regional initiatives. One of its strengths is a flourishing network of public private partnerships, such as one illustrated by conference presenter Adolf Olomi, CEO of Banana Investments Limited in Tanzania. Olomi’s company partnered with one of Bio-Innovate’s research projects, which focuses on developing innovative technologies for treating wastewater, producing biogas and re-using agro-industrial wastewater and the nutrients it contains in Banana wine-making company. Mr. Olomi was so interested in the innovations that he invested USD150,000 in the research project.

Key donors are equally excited about the potential of Bio-Innovate’s collaborative activities. “This conference is a true testament of the efforts you are putting in developing these products to be delivered in partnership with the private sector, civil societies and other market players,” said Gity Behravan of Nairobi’s Swedish Embassy, a major investor in the Program.  “The presence of a good number of private sector players in this audience is very encouraging. Their full participation in this conference is crucial in fomenting this crucial linkage with the scientists necessary to develop innovation systems that work.”

Throughout the 3-day conference, attendees will hear the most resent research findings, explore solutions to strengthen bioscience networks in the region, identify and frame strategies to challenges affecting the use and adoption of biosciences innovations, and further develop strategies for accelerating the use and integration of bio-resources to fuel the socio-economic development of the region.

The Bio-Innovate Program is currently supporting nine bioscience innovation and policy consortia projects bringing together 57 partnering institutions from the six eastern Africa countries of Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda and outside the region. Most of the findings from these projects will be presented at the upcoming conference.

Govt Includes Local Knowledge in Climate Change Mitigation

Picture by TNRF

                                                            

THERE is a ray of hope for people in Monduli, Longido and Ngorongoro districts as indigenous knowledge will be included in government planning for climate change mitigation.

The Tanzania Natural Resources Forum Head of Programmes, Mr Geofrey Mwanjela, told the 'Daily News' yesterday that during their preparatory oneyear project, it was discovered that there was a major rifts between the two. "We found that while pastoralists are masters of adaptation, climate change has proved to make this impossible but unfortunately government formal planning processes are not incorporating their knowledge though being possible," he said.

Mr Mwanjela said that in yesteryears, pastoralists were easily able to move their cattle during dry seasons but nowadays climate change and bad land use practices were restraining them. He said that during one year of mainstreaming of the climate change adaptation in dry lands development planning, they had conducted a pilot project in Longido for resource mapping and findings showed that the demand for more land was high.

"As we prepare for the continuation of the project for another four years, we plan to start with resource mapping in all districts of Arusha because we found that it was key and demanded by many," he said. The Assistant Director - Vice-President's Office, Environmental Impact Assessment and Climate Change, Mr Richard Muyungi, said that adaptation of climate change required a multisectoral approach and was happy that the TNRF project involved the community.

"It is worth to note that challenges of adapting to climate change requires commitment, support and participation of all stakeholders at both national and international levels and must involve government, private sector and NGOs," he said. Mr Muyungi said that the lessons from the three districts needed to be replicated in other areas of the country.

The Monduli District Executive Director (DED), Mr Twalib Mbasha, echoing on the use of indigenous knowledge said that it needed to be incorporated with budgets at national level. Mr Mbasha said that when the 2009 drought broke out, the pastoralists had already seen the signs though the experts and decision makers had no clue of it.

He said that all signs were showing that there would be increased land disputes because more villages were demanding demarcation of their territory and that something needed to be done. The Ngorongoro DED, Dr Karaine Kimaat Kunei, said that while indigenous knowledge needed to be merged in government plans, it was insignificant if good governance isn't respected.

Dr Kunei said that it was saddening that much as there were laws, policies and other enforcement tools in blueprint, many were not being implemented and the reason deforestation, charcoal burning, lack of proper land use still prevailed.


Written by Masembe Tambwe
                  Daily News

Solar energy to get boost from cutting-edge forecasts

BOULDER — Applying its atmospheric expertise to solar energy, the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) is spearheading a three-year, nationwide project to create unprecedented, 36-hour forecasts of incoming energy from the Sun for solar energy power plants.

The research team is designing a prototype system to forecast sunlight and resulting power every 15 minutes over specific solar facilities, thereby enabling utilities to continuously anticipate the amount of available solar energy. The work, funded primarily with a $4.1 million U.S. Department of Energy grant, will draw on cutting-edge research techniques at leading government labs and universities across the country, in partnership with utilities, other energy companies, and commercial forecast providers.

Much of the focus will be on generating detailed predictions of clouds and atmospheric particles that can reduce incoming energy from the Sun.

“It’s critical for utility managers to know how much sunlight will be reaching solar energy plants in order to have confidence that they can supply sufficient power when their customers need it,” says Sue Ellen Haupt, director of NCAR’s Weather Systems and Assessment Program and the lead researcher on the solar energy project. “These detailed cloud and irradiance forecasts are a vital step in using more energy from the Sun.”

The project takes aim at one of the greatest challenges in meteorology: accurately predicting cloud cover over specific areas. In addition to helping utilities tap solar energy more effectively, detailed cloud predictions can also improve the accuracy of shorter-term weather forecasts.

The project expands NCAR’s focus on renewable energy. NCAR designed a highly detailed wind energy forecasting system with Xcel Energy that saved Xcel ratepayers an estimated $6 million in a single year. The center is also creating advanced prediction capabilities to enable wind farm developers to anticipate wind energy potential anywhere in the world.

“Improving forecasts for renewable energy from the Sun produces a major return on investment for society,” says Thomas Bogdan, president of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, which manages NCAR on behalf of the National Science Foundation. “By helping utilities produce energy more efficiently from the Sun, we can make this market more cost competitive.”

-----Clouded forecasts-----

More than half of all states in the U.S. have mandated that utilities increase their use of renewable energy as a way to reduce dependence on fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas, which affect air quality and release greenhouse gases associated with climate change. But the shift to energy sources such as solar or wind means relying on resources that are difficult to predict.

Because large amounts of electricity cannot be stored in a cost-effective manner, power generated by a solar panel or any other source must be promptly consumed. If an electric utility powers down a coal- or natural gas-fired facility in anticipation of solar energy, those plants may not be able to power up fast enough if clouds roll in. The only option in such a scenario is to buy energy on the spot market, which can be very costly.

Conversely, if more sunshine reaches a solar farm than expected, the extra energy can go to waste.

But predicting clouds, which form out of microscopic droplets of water or ice, is also notoriously difficult. Clouds are affected by a myriad of factors, including winds, humidity, sunlight, surface heat, and tiny airborne particles, as well as chemicals and gases in the atmosphere.

Solar energy output is affected not just by when and where clouds form, but also by the types of clouds present. The thickness and elevation of clouds have greatly differing effects on the amount of sunlight reaching the ground. Wispy cirrus clouds several miles above the surface, for example, block far less sunlight than thick, low-lying stratus clouds.

To design a system that can generate such detailed forecasts, NCAR and its partners will marshal an array of observing instruments, including lidars (which use laser-based technology to take measurements in the atmosphere); specialized computer models; and mathematical and artificial intelligence techniques. Central to the effort will be three total sky imagers in each of several locations, which will observe the entire sky, triangulate the height and depth of clouds, and trace their paths across the sky.

The team will test these advanced capabilities during different seasons in several geographically diverse U.S. locations: the Northeast, Florida, Colorado/New Mexico, and California. The goal is to ensure that the system works year round in different types of weather patterns.

-----Not just for solar energy-----

Once the system is tested, the techniques will be widely disseminated for use by the energy industry and meteorologists.

“This will raise the bar for providing timely forecasts for solar power, ” Haupt says. “It also represents a great opportunity for providing far more detail about clouds in the everyday weather forecasts that we all rely on.”

One application for such detailed forecasts could be short-term predictions of pavement temperatures. Such information would be useful to airport managers, road crews, and professional race car drivers.

“Pavement temperatures make quite a bit of difference in how tires grip the surface,” says Sheldon Drobot, deputy director of NCAR’s Weather Systems and Assessment Program. “This has substantial safety implications.”

NCAR is launching the solar project with numerous partners in the public and private sectors. These include:

Government labs: National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Earth System Research Laboratory and other NOAA facilities;

Universities: The Pennsylvania State University, Colorado State University, University of Hawaii, and University of Washington;

Utilities: Long Island Power and Light, New York Power Authority, Public Service Company of Colorado, Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD), Southern California Edison, and the Hawaiian Electric Company;

Independent system operators: New York ISO, Xcel Energy, SMUD, California ISO, and Hawaiian Electric; and

Commercial forecast providers: Schneider Electric, Atmospheric and Environmental Research, Global Weather Corporation, and MDA Information Systems.

Computing time will be provided by the New York State Department of Economic Development's Division of Science, Technology and Innovation on an IBM Bluegene computer at Brookhaven National Laboratory.

The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research manages the National Center for Atmospheric Research under sponsorship by the National Science Foundation. Any opinions, findings and conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

New report: Lessons and Experiences for REDD+ in Tanzania

A new report entitled, “Equitable Benefit Sharing: Exploring Experiences and Lessons for REDD+ in Tanzania” has just been published.  The report and an accompanying information summary were developed in collaboration with the nine NGOs that are implementing REDD+ pilot projects in Tanzania. 

The purpose of the report is to facilitate documentation of emerging examples and lessons on benefit sharing from REDD+ pilot projects; enhance Tanzanian stakeholders’ understanding of equitable REDD+ benefit sharing; and identify practical benefit sharing options for the consideration of REDD+ implementers in Tanzania.

“Equitable benefit sharing is imperative if REDD+ is to result in sustainable emissions reductions, realize substantial benefits for forest communities, and avoid making vulnerable people worse off,” the report states. “Benefit sharing is, in other words, an ethical obligation that helps make REDD+ effective, equitable, sustainable, and accepted.”

The key messages, highlighted in the information brief, are as follows:

·      If effectively implemented, equitable benefit sharing can help ensure REDD+ reduces emissions, realizessubstantial benefits for forest communities and does not make vulnerable people worse off.

·      REDD+ financial incentives and other benefits will need to be shared among many actors at multiple levels, but substantial benefits should go to forest communities.

·      Establishing effective and equitable benefit sharing is challenging; therefore, mechanisms should be designed, implemented and monitored in accordance with social and environmental safeguards.

·      Lessons learned from REDD+ projects and other community based natural resource management initiatives should help inform benefit sharing mechanisms, so that they are equitable, realistic and effective.

The Tanzania Natural Resource Forum facilitated the production of the report and information brief, and participating institutions include, the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF), CARE Tanzania, Jane Goodall Institute (JGI), Mpingo Conservation and DevelopmentInitiative (MCDI), Tanzania Community Forest Network (MJUMITA), Tanzania Forest Conservation Group (TFCG), Tanzania Traditional Energy Development Organization (TaTEDO), Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), and Wildlife Conservation Society of Tanzania (WCST).

 The report will be shared at a side event today at the UNFCCC COP 18 in Doha, Qatar.

The report can be accessed at: http://www.tnrf.org/files/ERBS_report.pdf 

The information brief can be accessed at: http://www.tnrf.org/files/ERBS_brief.pdf

Place forests under local control to increase incomes and sustainability

To increase the incomes of many of the billion forest-dependent people worldwide the current model for investment in forests must be turned on its head. An initiative of unprecedented scale, led by The Forests Dialogue (TFD), IUCN and  the Growing Forests Partnerships (GFP), has found that optimizing the benefits and productivity of forests requires moving from a ‘resource-led’ model to a ‘rights-based’ system of ‘locally controlled forestry’, that places local control of forests at the heart of the investment process.

Over the last 3 years, The Forests Dialogue (TFD), partnering with IUCN, organized a series of country level dialogues engaging over 400 forest owners, investors, NGOs, governments and intergovernmental agencies. The resulting report, “Investing in Locally Controlled Forestry”, launched today at IUCN’s World Conservation Congress, shows that with the right processes in place, and under the right conditions, almost any individual or group can build a successful forest enterprise.

 “A first step is to recognize that many forests and landscapes are inhabited by people with some form of land rights,” says Chris Buss, Senior Programme Officer for IUCN’s Global Forest and Climate change Programme “Investors are increasingly aware they must respect these rights through recognized processes, although the practical implications of such processes have until now received less attention.” 

  

 The learning from this initiative demonstrates that these processes often result simply in compensation for loss of access to land or resources, rather than a genuine shared enterprise. In contrast, a “rights-based” system places local control at the heart of the process. Under this system, the people who own or have rights over the forest are the ones who seek investors and partnerships for managing their natural resource assets.

 “The rights-based approach recognizes local people’s autonomy and their rights to determine the land’s destiny and to gain income from its effective management,” says Minni Degawan, Project Coordinator for KADIOAN, an Indigenous Peoples organization based in the Philippines. “Empowering local people to make decisions on commercial forest management and land, with secure tenure rights, the ability to build their own organizations and access to markets and technology can be a highly effective way of raising incomes and protecting forestry resources.”

 “Communities, governments and investors all stand to gain from investing in locally controlled forestry. However, launching a commercially viable enterprise is not without its own challenges and requires adjustments to conventional investment approaches,” says Peter Gardiner, Natural Resource Manger for Mondi. “To facilitate this process, the Growing Forest Partnerships which includes IUCN and TFD have developed a practitioners’ manual, to be released later this month, which offers investors and rights holders a step-by-step guide to negotiating commercial agreements.”

IUCN and its partners from Growing Forest Partnerships is also continuing to gather further information from ILCF projects around the world and exploring the possibility of launching a pilot project based on best practices.