Climate Change Monitoring And Information Network

Climate Change and REDD Partnership Program : Project Completion Report for Phase I (2009/10)

The project has been implemented successfully with local partners in four countries: Indonesia (with Aliansi Masyarakat Adat Nusantara – AMAN), Laos (with the Global Association for People and the Environment – GAPE), Nepal (with the Nepal Federation of Indigenous Nationalities – NEFIN) and Viet Nam (with the Centre for Sustainable Development in Mountainous Areas – CSDM).

 As elaborated further below, the expected objectives and outcomes of the three main components of the project i.e. Awareness raising and capacity building; Advocacy for rights-based approach; and Promotion of community-based REDD partnership have been well achieved. Therefore, the project was also able to achieve its stated overall Goal “To contribute to the development and implementation of approaches in national REDD strategies that take both long-term forest conservation and the rights and concerns of indigenous peoples into account”. While in all four countries there is no doubt that the project has contributed to the development of approaches to national REDD strategies that take indigenous peoples’ rights into account, in none of the countries such national strategies have yet been finalized. Thus it is at this point of time not possible to fully assess whether the contributions made were sufficient to ensure that the national REDD strategies are based on a pro-poor and equitable approach respecting Human Rights and the rights of indigenous peoples in particular.

 

An indicator which allows us to assess the prospects of a full achievement of this ultimate aim is the level of involvement of indigenous peoples’ organisations and representatives in their respective government’s initiatives to develop national REDD strategies. In three out of the four countries involved in the project indigenous peoples’ organisations have to various degrees been involved in dialogues and discussions on, or even in formal bodies responsible for the development of national REDD strategies. In Nepal, the local partner NEFIN effectively participated in national level workshops and meetings organized by other national level REDD players and was invited to become member of the national task force (the so-called National REDD Cell). In Indonesia AMAN has cooperated with the Indonesian government at various levels (provincial and national) and in various ways in the development of a REDD strategy that respects indigenous peoples rights. And in Viet Nam our partner CSDM has established close cooperation with the national UN-REDD programme. Only in Laos, where the progress of developing a national REDD strategy has been slow and hasn’t reached far yet, indigenous peoples have not been involved yet. More details on the involvement of our partners in national REDD strategy discussions are provided further below.

Throughout the project period IWGIA and AIPP have, in addition to local partners, cooperated closely with Tebtebba and Forest Peoples Programme (FPP), above all in the joint production of information material. The modalities of cooperation and coordination (including pooling of financial resources) were discussed during a partners meeting in Chiang Mai, Thailand on July 14 - 15, 2009. A total of 15 participants attended from Tebtebba, Rainforest Foundation Norway (RFN), FPP, IWGIA, AIPP and AMAN. This was followed by the start-up coordination meeting among the project partners from July 16-17, with 20 participants from the six partners (AIPP, AMAN, CSDM, GAPE, IWGIA, NEFIN).

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The idea of including ‘reducing emissions from deforestation in developing countries’ in the global climate change negotiations was first presented by the Coalition for Rainforest Nations in 2005, at the UNFCCC’s 11th Conference of the Parties in Montreal, Canada. Five years later, in 2010, REDD was part of the agreements reached at the 16th COP in Cancun Mexico. During these five years REDD has evolved considerably. While the original idea behind REDD was to pay forest owners for preventing deforestation and thus reduce carbon emissions, the Cancun Agreement broadened the scope of REDD to include both actions that prevent emissions and actions that increase removal of carbon from the atmosphere, i.e. conservation and sustainable management of forests – thus the term “REDD plus”.
It is estimated that there are 350-400 million indigenous peoples in the world; two-thirds of them live in Asia1. However, it is difficult to give an accurate total number of the population of indigenous peoples because many are not recognized and reflected in national censuses in Asia. Indigenous peoples are some of the most impoverished, marginalized and vulnerable peoples in the world and are also the most affected by climate change impacts and its uncertainties.

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An estimated 260 million indigenous peoples live in Asia. Most of them inhabit forested uplandswhere a large number of them practice shifting cultivation, which is also called as swidden cultivationor rotational farming. For them, shifting cultivation is not merely a technique of farming; it is theirway of life. Government policies and laws have attempted to limit or outright ban shifting cultivationsince it is considered a primitive and destructive form of land use. Recently, several governments of theregion involved in REDD have identified shifting cultivation as a driver of deforestation in their REDDReadiness-Plan Idea Note (R-PIN) and Readiness Preparation Proposals (RPP).
Vietnam is home to 53 ethnic minority groups who mostly live in the forested uplands. Numbering over twelve million people, they highly depend on forests for their livelihood and development. But the pressures on these forests are ever increasing, posing a serious threat to the lives and stability of millions of people.

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