Services in the Forests: How Can Conservation and Development Be Reconciled (original) (raw)
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The need to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation is more urgent now than ever. International efforts through REDD+, CDM and voluntary carbon markets aim to encourage complementary activities of forest preservation, reforestation, afforestation and sustainable forest management. Many existing programs for sustainable forest management, agriculture and development dovetail with payment for ecosystem services (PES) programs in their similar concerns regarding the allocation of rights and ...
2016
Through the commodification of nature, the framing of the environment as a 'natural resource' or 'ecosystem service' has become increasingly prominent in international environmental governance. The economic capture approach is promoted by international organizations such as the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) through Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD), Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) and The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB). This paper will inquire as to how forest protection is related to issues of social and ecological justice, exploring whether forest exploitation based on the top-down managerial model fosters an unequitable distribution of resources. Both top-down and community-based approaches to forest protection will be critically examined and a more inclusive ethical framework to forest protection will be offered. The findings of this examination indicate the need for a renewed focus on existing examples of good practice in addressing both social and ecological need, as well as the necessity to address the less comfortable problem of where compromise appears less possible. The conclusion argues for the need to consider ecological justice as an important aspect of more socially orientated environmental justice for forest protection.
Forests and Society: Responding to Global Drivers of Change
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Deforestation, forest degradation, and land-use change are a major source of carbon emissions. The Copenhagen Accord recognised the crucial role of reducing emissions from deforestation, emphasized the role of forests in climate change mitigation, and called for the immediate establishment of a REDD+ mechanism. Most likely, it will form an integral part of the future climate change regime. For many developed countries, REDD+ seems to be an attractive option to achieve part of their reduction targets through investments in developing countries. For some developing countries, this offers an additional source of financing to support sustainable forest management and to boost their development plans and poverty-reduction strategies. This paper analyses the challenges and major gaps that developing countries are facing when planning their national strategies for the implementation of REDD+ schemes. We conclude that REDD+ as a climate change mitigation instrument will only be able to proceed at a pace that allows the meaningful participation of all relevant stakeholders in consensus-building. When the REDD+ enters the markets, the rights of local communities to forest land and carbon will need to be clarified and secured. Successful implementation of REDD+ will, in most cases, require strengthening the stake of local communities for managing their forest carbon assets and allowing them to benefit fully from emerging carbon markets and other funding schemes. Governments will need to renew their institutions and adopt new approaches to handle these challenges by including the role of forests in climate change mitigation as an integral part of their development plans and policies.
Forest conservation and development: the role of institutions
Reflection on all the hard work that has been done over the years for forests and other species-rich habitats in the developing world is bound to induce a certain amount of frustration. Successes have been achieved in a number of settings. However, deforestation throughout the tropics continues at a very rapid pace. Clearly, the conservation strategies employed to date have not been entirely appropriate and effective. Ideas about what can be done to save biodiverse habitats in the tropics have come and gone with great frequency, indeed. The first conservation efforts, some dating to the early twentieth century, involved replicating natural reserves of the North American or European kind in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. By the 1980s, the shortcomings of this approach had become all too apparent. As a rule, the under-funded park services of poor countries were finding it severely challenging to compel respect for park boundaries among local populations, which quite often had been evicted to create nature reserves in the first place. Escape from the predicament of 'paper parks' seemed to come in the form of integrated conservation and development projects (ICDPs), which are known in some places as initiatives for communitybased natural resource management (CBNRM). These involve the promotion of economic activities that are environmentally sound as well as remunerative for local communities, quite often in buffer zones surrounding officially designated reserves. Almost from the beginning, the difficulties of designing and successfully implementing ICDPs were recognized. 1 With time, awareness of these difficulties has increased, so much so that at least some conservation organizations currently are demonstrating a keen interest in seeing what can be salvaged of the national park model.
Public Policies and Management of Rural Forests: Lasting Alliance or Fool's Dialogue?
Most people in forest and rural areas manage trees as part of their livelihood systems. The resulting “domestic” or “rural” forests are distinct from conventional forest. They have historically been overlooked by the forestry sector and impacted by forest policies and regulatory frameworks. These forests presently encounter requalification and valuation dynamics, fueled by a sustainable development ideology, and induced by both public powers and local communities. These dynamics move in two different directions: the naturalization of rural forests by policy makers, and their politization by rural people. We draw on long-term research experiences in France, Morocco, Southeast Asia, and Africa on forests managed by “farmers”, among which some are analyzed in the Ecology and Society Feature, Public policies and management of rural forests: lasting alliance or fool’s dialogue?. We first elaborate on domestication, analyzed at tree, ecosystems and landscape levels, as a concept allowing for a better understanding of the specific relationships developed between rural people and forests. We then engage in a critical review of how forest-related and sustainable development policies consider rural forests, and discuss how they address (or do not address) their specificity and encourage (or do not encourage) their development.