Emerging Role of Community Forest Management in Reducing Carbon

Emission ―Insights from Land Tenure & REDD+ Nexus

Anar KoliPhD 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

5

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

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Coastal zone of Bangladesh

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 bio-diversity 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.

Fig1:The framework of the CFM and REDD+ nexus with land tenure and their potential outcomes in response to climate change 

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

Unsustainable response to CC

Opportunity-Achieve REDD goal-Enhance forest benefit, adaptive capacity of FUG-improvement of land tenure security

REDD/REDD+Carbon

payment scheme

Challenges or land tenure

•Exclusion of marginalized group•resource and access capture by elite

CFM paradigm(Co-management of PAs)•Devolution in forest governance•Decision making space for marginalized communities•Equity in distribution of access and benefits

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 co-management 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.

Table 1: The contribution of Community Forest Management in forest protection

 Source: Field survey at Chutonoti Wildlife Sanctuary, Bangladesh in 2010

020406080

100

Ove

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imro

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ent

Incr

ease

of

plan

tatio

n

Dec

reas

e of

ill

egal

felli

ng

Incr

ease

of

anim

al &

bird

Incr

ease

of t

he

fore

st p

rote

ctio

n

changes in forest health

% of respondent

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 co-management 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 Ownership of land Challenges for REDD+State/gov. management -Reserve forest-protected forest/areas

State ownership Corruption and Rent seeking problemPoor implementation & enforcement capacityNo/limited mechanism for payment of compensation or PES

Collective management Afforestation in roadside, coastal areas Co-management of protected areasBuffer zone CFMVillage forests

State ownership, sometimes transfer ownership to individual The state transfers management rights to CFM/individual but ownership remain with the state

Limited forest management rights to forest communitiesElite capture/elite dominationLand rights may emerge as a key discriminating factor for access the REDD benefit

Community management (customary system)

State ownershipSometimes resource holding by clans, group or individual based on customary rights

Complicated land rightsEncroachment problemMarginalization of poor and ethnic forest communities

Private management-private forest land –homestead gardening

Individual/collective ownership

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) .

Private (individualor collective)land and/ortree ownership allowed?

Local (incl.‘customary’) userights in place and recognized?

Indigenous peoples’ rights protected?

Carbon rightsdefined and addressed?

Local ‘voice’ inland use change decisions?

Benefit sharing andrevenue-allocation arrangements?

Support forlocal resourcerights – throughinstitutionalresponsibilities and capabilities?

On Paper

In Practice

On Paper

In Practice

On Paper

In Practice

On Paper

In Practice

On Paper

In Practice

On Paper

In Practice

On Paper

In Practice

Barzil Yes Med Yes Med Yes Med No Low Yes Low Yes Med Yes Med

Cameroon

Yes Low Yes Low No Low No Low Yes Low Yes Med Yes Med

DR Congo

Yes Low Yes Low No Low No Low Yes Low Yes Low Yes Low

Guyana

Yes Low Yes Med Yes Low No Low No Low Yes Low Yes Low

Indonesia

Yes Low Yes Low No Low No Low Yes Low Yes Med Yes Med

Malaysia

Yes Med Yes Med Yes Low No Low Yes Med Yes Med Yes Med

PNG 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.