Towards a gender-responsive implementation of The Convention on Biological Diversity
Towards a gender-responsive implementation of The Convention on Biological Diversity
27 February, 2019
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This research paper is prepared by UN-Women, with section contributions from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Bioversity International, the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). It first sets the context by presenting the gender dimensions of biodiversity conservation and the global norms on gender equality and natural resource management. It then outlines the key mandates for the integration of a gender perspective in biodiversity conservation and identifies the main entry points for strengthening gender considerations in decisions of the Parties to the CBD and in the implementation of the Convention, as well as in the future work of Parties and other stake-holders. Gender-responsive practices contributing to biodiversity conservation at the local and country level are then presented to highlight promising examples and lessons. The paper concludes with recommendations for action directed at specific stakeholders. The research paper was prepared by UN Women staff (Christine Brautigam, Verona Collantes, Sylvia Hordosch, Nicole van Huyssteen and Sharon Taylor), and consultant (Hanna Paulose). Section contributions and inputs were provided by Carolyn Hannan (University of Lund), Tanya McGregor (CBD Secretariat), Marle`ne Elias (Bioversity International), and Markus Ihalainen (Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR)).
Communities restoring landscapes: Stories of resilience and success
Communities restoring landscapes: Stories of resilience and success
25 February, 2019
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This collection of 12 stories from women and men in nine countries in different parts of Africa shines a light on the efforts of communities, some of them decades-long, in restoring degraded forests and landscapes. The stories are not generated through any rigorous scientific process, but are nonetheless illustrative of the opportunities communities create as they solve their own problems, and of the many entry points we have for supporting and accelerating community effort. The stories show that leadership, social capital and cooperation, clear property rights/tenure, and supportive governance are important for successful community-based restoration. From the perspectives of communities, “success” is not only about the number of trees planted and standing over a certain terrain: it is also about the ability to secure and enhance livelihoods; to strengthen existing community relationships and to build new ones with other actors; to develop a conservation ethic among younger generations; and, in some cases, to expand the rights of excluded individuals and groups. This collection is about amplifying the voices of local people in global policy debates.
Historical trajectories and prospective scenarios for collective land tenure reforms in community forest areas in Colombia
Historical trajectories and prospective scenarios for collective land tenure reforms in community forest areas in Colombia
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Collective land tenure in Colombia has been a constitutional right since 1991. It is therefore protected with the highest possible status, as it is defined as a fundamental right of indigenous and Afro-Colombian peoples. This condition has contributed to the creation of legal instruments and public policy arrangements to help traditional communities ensure their livelihoods and protect their territorial autonomy, especially in vast forest areas. However, this recognition is not consistent across traditional peoples in Colombia. This study, based on the method proposed by Bourgeois et al. (2017), applies the participatory prospective analysis (PPA) method to four cases in Colombia: (i) the Supreme Community Council of the Upper San Juan River (ASOCASAN) (Chocó), in the Pacific; (ii) the Arhuaco indigenous resguardo in Sierra Nevada (Cesar); (iii) the Afro-Colombian community councils in Valledupar rural areas (Cesar); and (iv) the indigenous, Afro-Colombian and campesino communities in Montes de María region, in the Caribbean. The main results reflect the different levels of land tenure security in these locations, based on contextual environmental, political, economic and legal factors at both national and regional level. The study provides a set of public policy recommendations to enhance collective land tenure security, from concept development to implementation, with a special focus on the present moment, when the implementation of the Peace Agreement poses new challenges for the protection of forest ecosystems and the recognition of the territorial rights of ethnic groups and campesinos.
FTA welcomes new Independent Steering Committee member Richard Muyungi
FTA welcomes new Independent Steering Committee member Richard Muyungi
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Thick vegetation grows along the banks of the Congo River. Photo by Ahtziri Gonzalez/CIFOR
The CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA) has welcomed a new member of its Independent Steering Committee (ISC), a key component of the governance of the program.
With demonstrated pan-African policy and development knowledge, Richard Stanislaus Muyungi brings to the table extensive experience in environment and climate change over the past 25 years, with a particular focus on international environmental and climate policy and governance processes under the United Nations.
He joins four other continuing independent members of the ISC – chair Anne-Marie Isaac, Florencia Montagnini, Linda Collette and Susan Braatz – as well as lead center representative Robert Nasi, non-CGIAR centers representative René Boot, CGIAR centers representative Stephan Weise, and ex-officio memberFTA Director Vincent Gitz.
Muyungi was the founding chairman of the Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF) in 2001 and the first chairman of the board of the Adaptation Fund Board in 2008, both of which continue to be important funds for enhancing climate resilience for local communities’ livelihoods and ensuring ecosystem sustainability in developing countries.
He was the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) chair of the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) between 2011 and 2013, responsible for overseeing scientific dialogue and inputs to support the implementation of climate change adaptation and mitigation programs globally, including the translation of scientific information into policy actions and enhancing the role of the forestry sector in addressing climate change through REDD+.
Muyungi also has extensive experience working at a national level where he has managed programs and processes in the area of environment and climate change, including as director of environment in the Tanzanian Vice President’s Office.
At a continental level, he was a senior adviser to the chair of the Committee of African Heads of State and Government on Climate Change from 2013-2015, supporting high-level dialogues between African heads of state on environment and climate change issues in Africa, toward the adoption of the Paris Agreement.
More recently he was appointed to manage environment and climate change for the Tanzania National Electric Supply Company under the Ministry of Energy, to help address increasing environmental challenges in energy development and supply.
Muyungi holds a degree in agriculture from Sokoine University of Agriculture, a postgraduate diploma in international relations from Reggio Calabria International Relations Institute in Italy, a master’s degree in environmental protection and management from the University of Edinburgh, UK, and a PhD in climate change from the University of Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania.
FTA welcomes the appointment of Muyungi as a pan-African policy and development expert to the ISC, which reports to the Board of Trustees (BoT) of FTA’s lead center, the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR). The ISC oversees work of the FTA Management Team including research programming, partnership engagement, delivery and effectiveness of the program at a strategic level.
Rethinking the food system to tackle triple burden of malnutrition
Rethinking the food system to tackle triple burden of malnutrition
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The global narrative on food security and nutrition is not new: 1 billion people go hungry because they do not get enough food to eat; 3 billion people are malnourished because they lack nutritious food; 2.5 billion people are overweight often because they consume too many empty calories.
International scientists are trying to find innovative solutions to tackle these layers of food insecurity, known as “the triple burden of malnutrition.”
The best approach to balancing nutritious food supply and demand means reevaluating the way food is produced and distributed and by addressing environmental challenges, including climate change and poor land management strategies.
Solutions could be found by moving away from production-centric notions, which focus on increasing crop yields through agricultural intensification, toward transformation of food production systems, said keynote speaker John Ingram, leader of the Food Research Programme in the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford, which coorganized the discussion with FTA.
The various stages of food production – including storage, packaging, sales, consumption and disposal – result in disparate socioeconomic and environmental outcomes, Ingram said.
“We’re trying to establish how to manage the tradeoffs between the two by exploiting potential synergies with intervention,” he added, listing various environmental food-related challenges.
By charting projected increases in population and wealth, as part of his research, Ingram extrapolated future calorie consumption, demonstrating that food system challenges are interconnected.
Women display foraged and cultivated forest foods at a food fair in Luwingu, Zambia. Photo by Joe Nkadaani/CIFOR
“The environmental consequences of meeting this demand under current food system practices and consumption trends are dire,” he said. A linear projection over the next 10 years based on current trends shows that more than half the population would be overweight.
“The challenge is to achieve food security for a growing, wealthier, urbanizing population while minimizing further environmental degradation against a background of stresses and shocks: natural resource depletion; many stagnating rural economies, changing climate and extreme weather, and social and cultural changes,” he added.
The aim is to develop resilience through a healthy food system so that these food system stresses can be addressed, while also laying the groundwork to tackle unpredictable events at the same time. Adaptation through reorganization of the food system is key, Ingram said.
“There was a notion we wanted sustainable diets,” he said. “What we actually want is sustainable systems delivering healthy diets.”
The challenge is to ramp down and ramp up simultaneously, he said. On the one side, the human health agenda must be addressed, which involves the World Health Organization (WHO) and UN Environment. On the other, the development agenda must work toward providing food security and nutrition for those who do not yet have it, which involves the CGIAR agricultural research partnership and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
“The important thing is looking for this word ‘synergy’; it really should be possible to get these two agendas hand-in-hand, and one of the best ways to do it is to include business more overtly in this equation,” Ingram said. “It’s the agents of change, the food system actors that we need to engage. And that means everybody.”
John Ingram speaks during the “Enhancing food system resilience” event. Photo by Tegar Agusta/CIFOR
FORESTS AT FOREFRONT
Forests have a vital role to play in restructuring food production systems and in maintaining environmental equilibrium. More than a billion people rely on forests and forest resources, which provide an important safety net at times of food and income insecurity, said Terry Sunderland, senior associate with CIFOR and a professor at Canada’s University of British Columbia.
It is paramount to ensure that the contribution of forests and trees is optimized across the four pillars of food security and nutrition – availability, access, utilization and stability – in a context of climate change and increasing demands on land for wood, food energy and ecosystem services, Sunderland said.
The international community must recognize that research has shown that people living closer to forests have better diets, and must integrate forests into food policies, he added.
World Agroforestry (ICRAF), for instance, has developed a portfolio to recommend ecologically suitable combinations of food trees and crops to provide year-round harvests. The project aimed to boost fruit and vegetable consumption, which is often consumed at a rate far lower than recommended by WHO, said ICRAF scientist Stepha McMullen.
“Without this documentation, it could mean that certain crops are overlooked, particularly in agriculture and nutrition planning projects and policies,” she said.
Indigenous and underutilized food tree and crop species are key in local food systems because they are often more adapted to the landscape and therefore more resilient in the face of climate change.
The mainstreaming of these foods into wider use is necessary to ensure communities are harnessing their total value, McMullen said.
LOCAL TO GLOBAL
Policies focused on sustainable intensification of agriculture can have a negative impact on the quality of diets of people living in those producing landscapes, said Amy Ickowitz, team leader of Sustainable Landscapes and Food at CIFOR.
If fewer types of food are grown in a landscape, there are fewer types available for consumption, she said.
Proponents of the “land sparing” agricultural intensification theory argue that it will result in higher incomes and better access to markets. However, studies have shown that fruit and vegetables found in local markets don’t travel very far, which means there will be less diversity unless food is imported, creating an ecological footprint.
A 14-year study of 200 households in Indonesia, which concluded in 2014, showed that declines in production and dietary diversity among rural houses are increasing – declines in fruit, vegetable and fish consumption, but increases in the consumption of meat, fat and processed foods.
“This is the classic nutrition transition we’re seeing in many parts of the world,” Ickowitz said.
Solutions proposed for solving some global challenges can sometimes have negative impacts on local diets on producing landscapes, she said. People in traditional systems often do eat lots of fruits, vegetables and legumes, some of the food items disappearing from local diets.
“We need to be careful not to try and solve some problems in one part of the global food system by making things worse elsewhere,” Ickowitz said.
By Julie Mollins, senior editor and writer for CIFOR.
The CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA) is the world’s largest research for development program to enhance the role of forests, trees and agroforestry in sustainable development and food security and to address climate change. CIFOR leads FTA in partnership with Bioversity International, CATIE, CIRAD, ICRAF, INBAR and TBI. FTA’s work is supported by the CGIAR Trust Fund.
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Over the past six years, conversations on sustainable forest management activities focused on transforming the way the international community addresses poverty, food insecurity, climate change and biodiversity loss have coalesced into the Global Landscapes Forum (GLF) movement.
Based on the landscape approach, the GLF aims to synthesize seemingly competing land-use goals to ensure social, environmental and economic equilibrium. In a nutshell, both the GLF and the approach address the pressures of population growth and human demand, which exacerbate agricultural expansion and intensification, and the extraction of commodities, including wood, vegetable oils and biofuels.
New funding from Germany’s Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU) for CIFOR and partners to move beyond theoretical discussions to implement and study landscape initiatives in Burkina Faso, Indonesia and Zambia also formed the basis for discussions.
“Moving from commitment to action is critical,” said Sunderland, who was instrumental in forming the GLF, which is now jointly coordinated by CIFOR – the lead center of the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA) – UN Environment and the World Bank, and funded by BMU and Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development.
“We need to start moving beyond the talking, beyond the rhetoric and actually moving towards implementation,” Sunderland said. “We need to shift away from the theoretical, away from the political, away from the development speak and into much more pragmatic understandings of how landscape approaches play out on the ground.”
Panelists shared lessons learned from various initiatives that have embraced the landscape approach.
RESOURCE FLOWS
The town of Isangi in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Photo by Axel Fassio/CIFOR
Musonda Mumba, chief of the Terrestrial Ecosystems Unit at UN Environment, demonstrated the interconnectedness of landscapes. Through observations of glacier activity in the Rwenzori Mountains on the border between Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda, she came to understand the scale of the impact activities could have downstream and beyond country borders.
“Look at the Rwenzori system – if you go on the world map and the Africa map in particular, you’re going to see that most of the rivers that emanate from this region flow down into Lake Victoria, and eventually into the Nile River system,” she said. “And how many people live in the Nile basin? It’s millions, right? It’s a lot of people.”
She made similar findings from research in Peru. Because the capital Lima is a desert city, it depends on the maintenance of upstream sources to provide hydroelectricity and fresh water supply for more than 10 million people, Mumba said.
SDG 15, Life on Land, is the mother of all SDGs, she said. “We cannot exist without the land and our food systems are based on the land — You cannot slice up the landscape. A landscape is so intricately and complexly interwoven together.”
Terry Sunderland speakers during “Looking at the past to shape the Landscape Approach of the future” at GLF Bonn. Photo by Pilar Valbuena/GLF
Mirjam Ros-Tonen, associate professor at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, explored local-level, small-scale initiatives to test their potential to become broader scale landscape projects.
She evaluated agroforestry cocoa projects in Ghana involving reforestation and landscape restoration, which provided income for smallholder farmers. She learned that the projects were contained on the farm.
“Partnerships are needed to extend the activities to landscape level and partnerships are needed to give farmers a voice and offer them opportunities for self organization and autonomous change,” Ros-Tonen said. “See if you can build on local initiatives, and from there build partnerships with other actors in the landscape.”
After working on at least 50 large-scale integrated landscape initiatives, similar patterns showed the need for multi-stakeholder platforms that can plan and conceptualize a long term joint vision over a number of decades, said Sara Scherr, president and chief executive of EcoAgriculture Partners, adding that the process can take from six months to three years.
Implementation involves adhering to five key steps, including expansion of the stakeholder network, securing financial backing and an assessment process. Collaborative planning projects need a long-term vision.
“You need a cadre of people champions in the landscape from pharma organizations, agribusiness, local governments, national governments, cultural leaders, the people who were committed to the vision of the transformed landscape who will work together,” Scherr said.
It is important to look beyond labels in use and focus on assessing progress over the longer term, noting that such approaches ought to be thinking far beyond the typical project cycle, she added.
External input is a vital part of achieving success in integrated landscape initiatives, said Roderick Zagt, program coordinator at Tropenbos International. While people he worked with understood the problems they faced and the consequences of various activities, they can benefit from external perspectives.
“We aren’t in the driving seat,” Zagt said. “We can’t impose that vision, but I think as an outsider you should try to set the conditions by which this vision will be reached through a structured dialogue process.”
Overall, panelists agreed that landscape approaches must be long term, locally owned endeavors, although their effectiveness is often dependent on external sources of support, Reed said.
“The general consensus was that the GLF should provide a clearing house mechanism to consolidate experiences and knowledge,” he added. “Its future mission could serve to enhance and clarify the evidence base, providing guidance on implementation strategies and lessons learned in the quest for truly sustainable landscapes.”
By Julie Mollins, originally published at CIFOR’s Forests News.
Subnational decision-making needed for climate gains
Subnational decision-making needed for climate gains
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A man walks in Mato Grosso, Brazil. Photo by Icaro Cooke Vieira/CIFOR
Global climate negotiations take place on the international stage, bolstered by countries’ national policies. But preventing greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and other land-use changes requires work at the local level.
For those efforts to be effective, it is important to understand who is involved at each level and in every sector, and how they interact, say scientists from CIFOR, who have conducted research about such multi-level governance.
“Land use and land-use change happen in a geographic space that is affected by multiple levels of decision making,” says senior scientist Anne Larson, who heads CIFOR’s Equal Opportunities, Gender, Justice and Tenure Team. “You can’t talk about land-use change or climate change adaptation and mitigation if you don’t take into account all levels, from the global to the ground”.
That means that local and regional governments, as well as local communities, have an important role to play in REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) initiatives – or other, similar efforts, Larson says. “There’s a lot of talk at climate negotiations about bottom-up planning, and that must be done below the national level” she adds, “We can’t expect global decisions to have an impact if we don’t have sub-national governments that can implement and manage plans in local jurisdictions”.
That assumes coordination among various groups with different interests. Depending on the place, they may include government agencies (with different sectoral priorities), private companies, local communities and non-governmental organizations. But sub-national coordination is easier to discuss than to implement, according to researchers who are conducting a global comparative study on REDD+.
Risks and opportunities
One obstacle arises when governments are only partly decentralized. This invariably leads to subnational governments who have “authority” but without resources to carry out their mandate. In some cases, national governments are reluctant to give up control to local or regional governments, even when power-sharing is established by law. In Mexico, the federal government maintains a great deal of decision-making power over forests — something that must be considered when implementing programs at a local level.
Another risk is that local or regional governments could favor the interests of economically powerful private companies over those of local communities that depend on forests for their livelihoods. But in the same instance, local governments may be more willing to protect their interests as they are often more responsive to their citizens.
When there are tensions among stakeholders, it can be tempting to do top-down planning that focuses on technical solutions and faster results. But when that was done in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia’s REDD+ pilot province, local people felt that they were “guinea pigs” in an experiment instead of active participants, studies found.
Processes that ensure the involvement of local people, instead of seeing them as “beneficiaries,” and that protect the rights of forest-dwelling communities may take longer and be more complex, but the outcomes are often more equitable, according to research conducted in Vietnam. In many places, local communities — especially women, young people and indigenous people — have been marginalized from decisions. Giving them a central place in decision making builds their negotiating skills and can create new local venues for discussing local issues, the researchers say. “When decision-making is done at a sub-national level, transparency and accountability are key”, Larson says. “That requires monitoring, but the kind of monitoring depends on your goals”.
The Marechal Rondon Highway runs 1550 km from Porto Velho to Cuiabá in Mato Grosso, Brazil. Photo by Kate Evans/CIFOR
When local stakeholders from different sectors are involved in developing monitoring processes, local priotities are discussed- says Juan Pablo Sarmiento Barletti, a postdoctoral fellow at CIFOR working on the global comparative study of REDD+. He and other researchers examining sub-national landscape governance implemented three different types of monitoring tools in Peru, Mexico and Nicaragua.
The Sustainable Landscape Rating Tool (SLRT) uses evidence-based evaluation of conditions as indiactors, to determine sustainability in land-use planning and management, land and resource tenure, biodiversity and other ecosystem services, stakeholder coordination and participation, and community production systems.
The SLRT was developed by the Climate, Community & Biodiversity Alliance and is being used by jurisdictions belonging to the Governors’ Climate and Forests Task Force. Aimed at fostering governance policies for sustainability, the tool is mainly designed to assess the enabling conditions required. Its success depends on the availability of the information required by each indicator, which can be an obstacle in jurisdictions where data are lacking.
The Multilevel Governance Monitoring Process (MLGMP) grew out of scenario-building processes that assessed carbon emissions in eight landscapes in four countries. The prototype was designed in Peru’s Amazonian Madre de Dios region, where land-use planning and governance is complicated by social conflicts related to overlapping land claims by loggers, miners, farmers, tourism operators and others.
The process brought people together to develop a shared vision for the future and set goals for working toward it. In Madre de Dios, representatives of seven government agencies participated in workshops to identify potential indicators and strategies for monitoring, but the process was hampered by lack of commitment by key regional government officials.
A similar process in Mexico involved national and sub-national government agencies, as well as civil society groups, donors, community representatives and researchers. At workshops in the Yucatán and Chiapas, participants identified and prioritized challenges to good governance, set goals and agreed on indicators for measuring progress.
The tool can be adapted to local needs and priorities, but participants said the one-day workshops were not sufficient to work out details, including how the monitoring would be implemented and by whom. The workshops also revealed differences in levels of participation by women, which should be addressed in monitoring, the researchers said.
A third tool, the Participatory Governance Monitoring Process (PGMP), was designed to better involve local people in forest governance and strengthen women’s participation in decision making in their communities. It was developed as part of a research project in indigenous communities and territories in Nicaragua’s North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region.
Participants gathered together to decide what ‘good governance’ was. Characteristics such as a strong community, good leaders, more participation by women and good forest management were agreed, before a series of ‘yes-or-no’ questions determined whether the requirements were being met.
Using the questions as indicators, the results informed a tool that builds local community participation into both planning and monitoring, says Sarmiento. “This can be used to determine the degree of local participation, especially by women”.
The three tools have different purposes, and the best to use in a particular case depends on the local situation and specific monitoring goals, Larson adds.
Global commitments require local implementation
At the Paris climate summit in 2015, countries made commitments to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. Those commitments, known as Nationally Determined Commitments (NDCs), will be used to measure their progress toward their targets.
In countries whose NDCs include reducing emissions by controlling deforestation and forest degradation, sub-national governments must play a key role, Sarmiento says.Nevertheless, countries with REDD+ commitments do not always highlight the importance of sub-national governance in their NDCs. Of the 60 countries that have REDD+ programs or strategies, only 39 mention sub-national governments. Of those, 21 define a specific role for them, but in only seven NDCs is that a decision-making role, according to a CIFOR study.
“This could be a missed opportunity,” Larson says. “Climate negotiators hail the Paris agreement as a ‘bottom-up’ accord, but what they consider to be the bottom is usually the national level,” Sarmiento says. “Implementation won’t work without attention to sub-national governance.”
Research like the CIFOR studies reveals both the difficulty of bringing stakeholders from different sectors and levels of government together. They also unearth the opportunities offered by participatory approaches that enable local communities to make decisions together with sub-national governments, with the goal of ensuring equitable solutions for forest dwellers.
“Governance always has a local flavor to it,” Sarmiento says. “That is why its monitoring needs to be informed by local people’s practices and their perceptions of what it means to govern well.”
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Peatlands are increasingly playing a bigger role in forest conservation thanks to their extraordinary proficiency at carbon sequestration.
In November the Center for International Forestry Research’s (CIFOR) Forests News reported that the ‘bogs’ had finally been given the spotlight. The newly established International Tropical Peatlands Center (ITPC) is set to open its doors in 2019, to bring ‘researchers, governments, civil society and other stakeholders together to ensure the conservation and sustainable management of peatlands throughout Southeast Asia, the Congo Basin and Peru’.
Here, three scientists from CIFOR – a coordinating partner of the ITPC and longtime peatlands analysist – explain ‘why peatlands, and why now.’
Answers have been written in sic, though minor amendments have been made for easy reading.
Why are peatlands important for biofuel and bioenergy?
Himlal Baral: Peatlands provide a wide range of ecosystem goods and services- for example, climate regulation and water cycling. And they are a great source of biodiversity, as well as ecosystem goods- such as timber and nontimber products, including bioenergy. The biomass produced peatlands can be converted into sustainable energy production. That’s why it’s getting attention as bioenergy.
What are you working on right now?
HB: We are doing quite a few and different projects- but one of the projects is about bioenergy production potential in a variety of landscapes, including peatlands. We are looking at how peatlands can be utilized for sustainable biomass production without damaging their nature and characteristics. The technique is called paludiculture. It involves growing trees or growing things on wetlands conditions, it is an excellent example to utilize peatlands. We are currently developing, testing a wide variety of tree species that can produce bioenergy from peatlands.
Why is the study of peatlands important?
HB: Peatlands are extremely important to ecosystems. They are home to endangered species, rare species, such as orangutans. They are great sequesters of carbon and they provide livelihood opportunities for millions of people living on and around peatlands. So, they are not only for people, but also for nature.
Can you tell us what you’re working on right now?
Dede Rohadi: In leading this project I work with local partners, and our main focus is to understand how the community is using and managing the peatlands. We are trying to identify what other options there are in developing livelihoods other than oil palm, because the problem is it seems that everybody goes into the oil palm business, and we understand there are a lot of negative impacts to the environment because of this expansion. So, we’re trying to develop what are the other options that are more in line with peatland conservation strategies.
What is the relationship between humans and peatlands?
DR: I think it is interesting to understand the behavior of people, especially the farmers who are living around the area. For example, we can understand why the people are interested in expanding the oil palm plantations. Previously they used the peatland for growing paddy, silviculture, lots of fruits on their lands- but it seems because of the market, they turn to oil palm plantations.
Also, some people are selling their lands to other people for oil palm expansion. There is a lot of industry there and the market is good, so people are dragged in because they feel comfortable with oil palm as they have secure income from it. But actually, there are a lot of other commodities that may be prospective for them to develop. But, there are some questions. For example, we need to provide the market channel and also we need to provide them with the knowledge and the skills on how to use or develop these alternative products. That’s what my project is doing.
What are some alternatives?
DR: For example, we can develop on farm-based and off-farm-based options. On farm-based, for example, some commodities such as pineapple. Pineapples grow well in the peatlands and the peatlands don’t need to be drained. In fact some of the people also now plant them, and they have a good market. But, the question is if more people grow this pineapple what will be the market? If the market is saturated then that is an important question for us to develop. And coconut, for example. In one village coconut has been planted by people and up until now they’re still planting coconuts and it has been the main source of their livelihoods. And betel nuts too.
We can also develop off-farm activities such as honeybees, because the people in the area are still collecting wild honey. It’s a good product, and the market is there, but they need to improve the market channel. They need to improve, for example, the quality of the honey and how to also not only collect the honey but also cultivate the honey in the home garden. Because there are different honeys- we can provide them with the knowledge.
Another product is fish, for example. A lot of people are living around the river, which has a high potential for fish industry. Up until now it has not been used optimally- so we can provide the technology for example, on how to process fish into fish products, and add value to their products.
Why did you get into forestry?
Herry Purnomo: I got into forestry first, because I love nature and lots of things related to nature I would like to contribute to. Secondly, forests and forestry matter to our lives, to the sustainability of this planet. Forests can contribute to the economy of this country [Indonesia]. For example, timber production, as well as ecosystem services such as ecotourism, as well as providing lots of benefits to people and local communities.
Can you tell us about your peatlands work?
HP: Now I’m working on a community-based fire prevention and peatland restoration in Riau province in Indonesia. We call this ‘participatory action research’. We try to work with the local community to understand the behavior of peatlands, to reduce the fire evidence, as well as to restore the degraded land.
So the community is not only the object of our work, but also the subject of restoring peatlands. It’s a 15-month project and very interesting actually to understand the peatlands, as well as transforming the local livelihood into more peatland-friendly. We use the theory of change for the current situation – in which people are likely to use fire fir agriculture and peatland, to reduce the fire as well as improve the livelihood of the people there. We’re funded by Temasak and the Singapore Cooperation Enterprise from Singapore.
Why is the study of peatlands important?
HP: Firstly, the fire in 2015- let’s call it a disaster because it produced a lot of toxic haze and people in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore in particular suffered from the burning of the peatlands and forests.
So now we try to do research and science enquiry to provide more sustainable livelihoods by not only investigating, but by providing evidence and an action arena that communities as well as government can do – peatland management without fire. It’s not easy because using fire is common for local communities, but we provide evidence that a community can get benefits by not using fire, but more sustainable agriculture. We believe that good peatland management will happen in Riau in this way.
By Christi Hang, originally published at CIFOR’s Forests News.
Are community forests a viable model for the Democratic Republic of Congo?
Are community forests a viable model for the Democratic Republic of Congo?
06 February, 2019
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Since the second half of the 2000s, several options for implementing community-based forest management in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), like the local community forest concession (LCFC), have been discussed in the countrys technical and political circles. Proposals and pilot testing have increased in the last five years, but the funding of initiatives is often proposed for divergent purposes and taking different approaches. We reviewed current experiences in the Eastern province of the DRC and found that nobody has carried out an estimation of the financial returns of the business models they drew up for/with the communities involved. We therefore conducted a financial feasibility analysis for two case studies, estimating the costs of developing/implementing activities and the benefits expected for the communities within the next five years. Three main conclusions were drawn from the analysis: (1) most activities conducted under the LCFC model deal with rural development, and not with forestry operations per se; (2) several forestry activities such as biodiversity conservation or carbon sequestration are not detailed in the management documents and appear to have little legitimacy for local populations; (3) the two LCFCs show a negative financial performance because the inception and implementation costs are substantially higher than the medium-term profits. Community forestry is unlikely to develop in the DRC unless local people are guaranteed that it will contribute to improving their livelihoods, notably their financial and physical capital. This requires that LCFC initiatives focus on actual productive uses of forest resources, which financial performance is systematically assessed ex ante. A simplification of the legal constraints is also needed to reduce the cost of creating and managing a LCFC.
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A Brazil nut area, part of GCS REDD+ in Madre de Dios, Peru. Photo by Yoly Gutierrez/CIFOR
In its first 10 years, REDD+ has inspired much enthusiasm and hope for a global transition away from practices that threaten tropical forests, toward lasting climate mitigation.
Despite unexpected challenges and a funding pot that lacked the depth to trigger global mobilization, REDD+ is beginning to deliver on its potential – if more slowly than expected.
A new book, Transforming REDD+: Lessons and new directions, which has launched at this year’s Conference of the Parties (COP) of the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) in Katowice, Poland, takes stock of the efforts taken so far to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and enhance forest carbon stocks (REDD+) at multiple scales.
At the 2007 UNFCCC COP in Bali, Indonesia, REDD+ emerged on the global scene with the promise of building a bridge toward a carbon-neutral economy – quickly, easily and cheaply.
“REDD+ has not taken its planned route from A to B – that is, providing forest-rich developing countries with direct incentives to promote climate mitigation in the forest and land-use sector,” said Arild Angelsen, a professor at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences and a senior associate with the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR). “But we can learn many lessons from its journey so far.”
Why did REDD+ not turn out as expected? Lack of finance is a major reason, specifically the fact that results-based payment – rewarding developing countries in exchange for keeping and/or improving forest carbon stocks – has not been the driving force it was meant to be. REDD+ was meant to become an integral part of a global carbon market, but this market never materialized. Instead, most funding comes in the form of development assistance from a small handful of donor countries, and some developing countries are shouldering a big part of the costs to put REDD+ into action.
“There are also a lot of different, sometimes conflicting ideas about REDD+,” said Christopher Martius, coordinator of the Global Comparative Study on REDD+ and a co-editor of the book. “Making a distinction between REDD+ as the outcome (reduced emissions) and as a specific framework (the activities) to achieve that outcome could clear up a lot of confusion.
Many observers are now asking whether REDD+ has achieved its intended aims of reducing deforestation and forest degradation or if it has improved local livelihoods and forest governance.
To answer these questions, the authors undertook an analysis based on 10 years of research and almost 500 scientific publications from GCS REDD+, and also drew on the wider literature, on partner contributions, and on policy debates at global, national, subnational and local levels.
With more than 350 ongoing REDD+ projects and programs, there are now enough data – albeit far from perfect – to draw first conclusions about the kind of local impacts REDD+ initiatives have had on forests and communities.
“In a nutshell, results are limited and mixed,” said Amy Duchelle, a co-editor and CIFOR senior scientist who leads research on subnational initiatives in GCS REDD+. “Findings from the few studies on forest carbon and land-use outcomes are moderately encouraging. REDD+ impacts on well-being are mixed – but they’re more likely to be positive when incentives are included. And while there has been some progress in terms of land tenure and the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities, local actions need more national policy support to be effective.”
National and subnational forest conservation policies have shown some positive impacts on forests, but no particular policy instrument stands out as a “silver bullet”. Enabling conditions such as political commitment, national ownership, inclusive decision-making and available results-based funding need to be in place and sustained for REDD+ to be transformed.
Many countries’ Nationally Determined Contributions to the 2015 UN Paris Agreement on climate change, and national sustainable development initiatives such as green growth strategies, do recognize the role of forests in mitigating climate change. However, as Pham Thu Thuy, a co-editor, and CIFOR scientist and Vietnam country director, said, these policies and green initiatives will not be successful in achieving their intended goals if they do not have clear and effective policies and measures to address drivers of deforestation and degradations.
The authors show that REDD+, once envisioned as a tool for transformational change, has itself been transformed. They point out that, while REDD+ has evolved into a variety of interventions, and stakeholders may differ in their preferred vision of how REDD+ evolves, all can agree that the core objectives must not be substantially altered or diluted.
“Arguably, the world cannot reach the 1.5°C or even 2°C targets without massive reductions in emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and increases in forest carbon stocks,” the authors wrote.
In order for REDD+ to be an effective ‘cure’ for the ‘illness’ of deforestation and forest degradation, it will need to adapt further – to a new global climate change architecture, rapidly shifting global politics, and different expectations from donors, REDD+ countries, the private sector and local communities.
“REDD+ needs a clear theory of change – a road map towards a carbon-neutral economy through a transformation of business-as-usual practices,” Martius said.
The authors lay out key pathways to achieving an effective, efficient and equitable REDD+, including emphasizing the positive side-effects of REDD+, and shortening the road to recovery through experimentation and bold approaches.
Results-based payment will continue to play a large role, but national and subnational policy reforms need to go beyond this approach to focus on issues such as land-use planning, tenure and agriculture and address the variety of drivers and problems in their specific national and regional circumstances. And while international finance can give a nudge in the right direction, ultimately countries must set the economic incentives for state and private actors to align their activities with green development strategies.
A waterfall in a REDD+ Safeguards and Benefit Sharing Project, Jambi, Indonesia. Photo by Icaro Cooke Vieira/CIFOR
“Some reforms can be win-win for the economy and environment, such as cutting subsidies to deforesting crops and adding forest criteria in the fiscal transfers from central to local governments, as India has done,” Angelsen said.
Looking at multi-level governance and coordination, the authors also conclude that some problems simply cannot be solved through better coordination.
“In reality, those who deforest have often been more effective at coordinating their efforts than those who support REDD+ or similar initiatives,” said Anne Larson, a CIFOR principal scientist who leads the research on multi-level governance in GCS REDD+.
“In order to challenge business-as-usual trajectories and address both effectiveness and equity goals, we need to develop a deeper understanding of the underlying dynamics among actors in a given context.”
Brazil, Costa Rica, Ethiopia, India and South Korea have all rolled out bold forest conservation and restoration initiatives, and the authors say more countries need to do the same. Nationwide initiatives with a pro-forest narrative can cultivate the political and intellectual ownership needed to build coordination across ministries and effect long-term impact.
“Change needs to come from both the top and the bottom,” Duchelle said. “Jurisdictional programs for REDD+ and low-emission development at the subnational level also hold promise for protecting tropical forests and securing local rights and livelihoods.”
The authors also call on countries to be brave and assess impacts. Clear data and information are critical to every stage of REDD+, from planning and policy design to implementation and evaluation. But independent evaluations can be risky, as disappointing short-term evaluated impacts in a learning phase could jeopardize future financing. For this and other reasons, there is a persistent lack of data on how various drivers of land-use change affect forest emissions.
“The reality is that powerful agents of deforestation and forest degradation can influence how information on drivers is generated, and how visible it is,” said Veronique De Sy, a co-editor and postdoctoral Researcher at Wageningen University & Research in The Netherlands. “To counteract this, national forest monitoring systems need to address participation, transparency, accountability and coordination.”
Finally, the authors review four emerging strategies that could help achieve the objective of reducing emissions from the forest and land use sector – with some fine-tuning. These are: zero deforestation and other private sector commitments, climate-smart agriculture, jurisdictional approaches to low-emission rural development, and forest landscape restoration. The book devotes a full chapter to each of these approaches, examining evidence of impact and drawing lessons for a more complementary, streamlined approach.
“Our main goal as editors,” notes Angelsen, “is to provide a critical, evidence-based analysis of REDD+ implementation so far, without losing sight of the urgent need to reduce forest-based emissions to prevent catastrophic climate change.”
“Focusing on a positive narrative about how forests contribute to economic development and climate goals can galvanize support and generate new momentum,” he adds.
By Erin O’Connell, originally published at CIFOR’s Forests News.
Momentum builds to expand scale of land restoration for regreening of northern Ghana
Momentum builds to expand scale of land restoration for regreening of northern Ghana
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Parkland in Ghana. Photo by ICRAF
Participants in a recent workshop have called for more trees to restore landscapes and improve livelihoods in northern Ghana.
“There is an urgent need in northern Ghana for metro, municipal and district assemblies, NGOs and civil society organizations to act immediately to address issues such as land tenure, bush fires, indiscriminate tree cutting, and a lack of financial resources, so that we increase tree cover and improve land health and livelihoods. This is our call to action.”
So reads the powerful declaration from a workshop in Bolgatanga, capital of Ghana’s Upper East Region. The unanimity of the participants in issuing their urgent call for action to expand the scale of land restoration for the regreening of northern Ghana and beyond was surprising, and very encouraging, given the diversity of their occupations and backgrounds.
The nearly 40 people who gathered to explore practices and policies that could encourage more trees in landscapes so as to reverse land degradation and improve livelihoods and food security, included leading farmers and extension officers from three districts — Kassena-Nankana West, Bawku West and Garu-Tempane — as well as representatives of Catholic Relief Services, Tree Aid and World Vision, and researchers from the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF).
The participants identified the many benefits of increasing trees and forests in landscapes, such as the conservation of soil and water and the important economic, medicinal and nutritional value of indigenous species.
They also examined the complex constraints — cultural, climatic, legal, gender — that confront everyone working to improve the management of agricultural, pastoral and forest land in the region, including tree-planting activities that do not take into account the importance of species, context, management and timing.
Along with the call to action, the workshop produced a series of recommendations for policies and actions to improve tree cover, forests and land health in the three districts, including new laws to prevent indiscriminate tree-cutting, analyses and mapping of soils in the communities, and more emphasis on agroforestry systems with indigenous trees and crops.
The workshop was convened by two projects: West Africa Forest–Farm Interface (WAFFI), funded by the International Fund for Agricultural Development and supported by the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA), led by CIFOR and implemented by ICRAF in Ghana and Burkina Faso; and the five-year- Regreening Africa, funded by the European Union, in which ICRAF is a leading partner.
Shea nuts. Photo by ICRAF
With such a diverse group of people, discussions naturally ranged widely, covering many of the issues that afflicted the region.
For example, Thomas Addaoh, CIFOR field coordinator of WAFFI Ghana, noted that the demand for charcoal in urban centres in northern Ghana is resulting in the widespread harvesting of shea trees (Vitellaria paradoxa) for their wood as a source of the fuel. Research undertaken for WAFFI found that more than a quarter of the charcoal in the region was derived from shea, making it the most common source of wood for the widely-used fuel.
Shea is also a vital source of income for women, who sell the shea nuts, which produce a quality oil with a growing global market because of its use in cosmetics and as a cocoa butter substitute in food, or process them into shea butter for local use. The cutting of shea trees for charcoal production, Addaoh said, meant female harvesters and sellers of the shea nuts were competing with male harvesters and vendors of the wood, something that requires urgent attention to ensure sustainable management of the fuel-and-oil resource and equitably meet the income needs of households.
More generally, Edward Akunyagra of World Vision, the project manager of Regreening Africa in Ghana, said that the project is working to reverse the loss of trees, aiming to influence policy and mindsets through an advocacy campaign.
According to the Upper East regional director of Ghana’s Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA), Francis Ennor, who attended the workshop along with three district directors from the ministry, land degradation and loss of tree cover in the region are ‘extremely serious’. Rampant bush fires destroy groundcover and trees, and expose the soil to the weather, such as heavy rain and wind, which leads to erosion and loss of fertility.
However, Ennor said the workshop was addressing his concerns and he hoped that from now on local authorities would take tree management and planting very seriously and that every community would have a land-use plan to increase tree cover.
Such land-use plans, Ennor said, could designate degraded areas for restoration through farmer-managed natural regeneration (FMNR). This could create community forests, such as the one supported by World Vision Australia that the workshop participants had visited the previous day in Saaka Aneogo.
Ennor argued that there is a need for policies to protect such community forests and make their management sustainable and less vulnerable because of insecure land tenure. This is a prerequisite for increasing the scale of FMNR and encouraging planting to increase tree cover in croplands and across whole landscapes.
Indeed, the purpose of the workshop, according to ICRAF’s Emilie Smith Dumont, was to bring together a range of people working for transformation of the Upper East Region to examine ways to ‘create synergies for resilient livelihoods’. Smith Dumont coordinates the WAFFI project in northern Ghana and southern Burkina Faso and also acts as a focal point for Regreening Africa in Ghana.
“We have many projects in the northern belt,” Smith Dumont said. “Some are working in silos, so today we are trying to bring all those people together to share lessons and promote action.”
For more information, please contact Emilie Smith Dumont at e.smith@cgiar.org.
The West Africa Forest-Farm Interface (WAFFI) is led by CIFOR in collaboration with ICRAF and Tree Aid with support from the International Fund for Agricultural Development. WAFFI aims to identify practices and policy actions that improve the income and food security of smallholders in Burkina Faso and Ghana through integrated forest and tree management systems that are environmentally sound and socially equitable.
Regreening Africa is a five-year project that seeks to reverse land degradation among 500,000 households across 1 million hectares in eight countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Incorporating trees into crop land, communal land and pastoral areas can reclaim Africa’s degraded landscapes. In Ghana, the work is led by World Vision in collaboration with ICRAF and Catholic Relief Services.
WAFFI is supported by the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA), which is supported by the CGIAR Trust Fund. ICRAF is one of the 15 members of the CGIAR, a global research partnership for a food-secure future.
This story was produced with the financial support of the European Union. Its contents are the sole responsibility of the Regreening Africa project and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.
Momentum builds to expand scale of land restoration for regreening of northern Ghana
Momentum builds to expand scale of land restoration for regreening of northern Ghana
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FTA COMMUNICATIONS TEAM
Parkland in Ghana. Photo by ICRAF
Participants in a recent workshop have called for more trees to restore landscapes and improve livelihoods in northern Ghana.
“There is an urgent need in northern Ghana for metro, municipal and district assemblies, NGOs and civil society organizations to act immediately to address issues such as land tenure, bush fires, indiscriminate tree cutting, and a lack of financial resources, so that we increase tree cover and improve land health and livelihoods. This is our call to action.”
So reads the powerful declaration from a workshop in Bolgatanga, capital of Ghana’s Upper East Region. The unanimity of the participants in issuing their urgent call for action to expand the scale of land restoration for the regreening of northern Ghana and beyond was surprising, and very encouraging, given the diversity of their occupations and backgrounds.
The nearly 40 people who gathered to explore practices and policies that could encourage more trees in landscapes so as to reverse land degradation and improve livelihoods and food security, included leading farmers and extension officers from three districts — Kassena-Nankana West, Bawku West and Garu-Tempane — as well as representatives of Catholic Relief Services, Tree Aid and World Vision, and researchers from the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF).
The participants identified the many benefits of increasing trees and forests in landscapes, such as the conservation of soil and water and the important economic, medicinal and nutritional value of indigenous species.
They also examined the complex constraints — cultural, climatic, legal, gender — that confront everyone working to improve the management of agricultural, pastoral and forest land in the region, including tree-planting activities that do not take into account the importance of species, context, management and timing.
Along with the call to action, the workshop produced a series of recommendations for policies and actions to improve tree cover, forests and land health in the three districts, including new laws to prevent indiscriminate tree-cutting, analyses and mapping of soils in the communities, and more emphasis on agroforestry systems with indigenous trees and crops.
The workshop was convened by two projects: West Africa Forest–Farm Interface (WAFFI), funded by the International Fund for Agricultural Development and supported by the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA), led by CIFOR and implemented by ICRAF in Ghana and Burkina Faso; and the five-year- Regreening Africa, funded by the European Union, in which ICRAF is a leading partner.
Shea nuts. Photo by ICRAF
With such a diverse group of people, discussions naturally ranged widely, covering many of the issues that afflicted the region.
For example, Thomas Addaoh, CIFOR field coordinator of WAFFI Ghana, noted that the demand for charcoal in urban centres in northern Ghana is resulting in the widespread harvesting of shea trees (Vitellaria paradoxa) for their wood as a source of the fuel. Research undertaken for WAFFI found that more than a quarter of the charcoal in the region was derived from shea, making it the most common source of wood for the widely-used fuel.
Shea is also a vital source of income for women, who sell the shea nuts, which produce a quality oil with a growing global market because of its use in cosmetics and as a cocoa butter substitute in food, or process them into shea butter for local use. The cutting of shea trees for charcoal production, Addaoh said, meant female harvesters and sellers of the shea nuts were competing with male harvesters and vendors of the wood, something that requires urgent attention to ensure sustainable management of the fuel-and-oil resource and equitably meet the income needs of households.
More generally, Edward Akunyagra of World Vision, the project manager of Regreening Africa in Ghana, said that the project is working to reverse the loss of trees, aiming to influence policy and mindsets through an advocacy campaign.
According to the Upper East regional director of Ghana’s Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA), Francis Ennor, who attended the workshop along with three district directors from the ministry, land degradation and loss of tree cover in the region are ‘extremely serious’. Rampant bush fires destroy groundcover and trees, and expose the soil to the weather, such as heavy rain and wind, which leads to erosion and loss of fertility.
However, Ennor said the workshop was addressing his concerns and he hoped that from now on local authorities would take tree management and planting very seriously and that every community would have a land-use plan to increase tree cover.
Such land-use plans, Ennor said, could designate degraded areas for restoration through farmer-managed natural regeneration (FMNR). This could create community forests, such as the one supported by World Vision Australia that the workshop participants had visited the previous day in Saaka Aneogo.
Ennor argued that there is a need for policies to protect such community forests and make their management sustainable and less vulnerable because of insecure land tenure. This is a prerequisite for increasing the scale of FMNR and encouraging planting to increase tree cover in croplands and across whole landscapes.
Indeed, the purpose of the workshop, according to ICRAF’s Emilie Smith Dumont, was to bring together a range of people working for transformation of the Upper East Region to examine ways to ‘create synergies for resilient livelihoods’. Smith Dumont coordinates the WAFFI project in northern Ghana and southern Burkina Faso and also acts as a focal point for Regreening Africa in Ghana.
“We have many projects in the northern belt,” Smith Dumont said. “Some are working in silos, so today we are trying to bring all those people together to share lessons and promote action.”
For more information, please contact Emilie Smith Dumont at e.smith@cgiar.org.
The West Africa Forest-Farm Interface (WAFFI) is led by CIFOR in collaboration with ICRAF and Tree Aid with support from the International Fund for Agricultural Development. WAFFI aims to identify practices and policy actions that improve the income and food security of smallholders in Burkina Faso and Ghana through integrated forest and tree management systems that are environmentally sound and socially equitable.
Regreening Africa is a five-year project that seeks to reverse land degradation among 500,000 households across 1 million hectares in eight countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Incorporating trees into crop land, communal land and pastoral areas can reclaim Africa’s degraded landscapes. In Ghana, the work is led by World Vision in collaboration with ICRAF and Catholic Relief Services.
WAFFI is supported by the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA), which is supported by the CGIAR Trust Fund. ICRAF is one of the 15 members of the CGIAR, a global research partnership for a food-secure future.
This story was produced with the financial support of the European Union. Its contents are the sole responsibility of the Regreening Africa project and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.
Restoration 
Plantations and tree crop commodities 
Enhanced nutrition and food security 
Biodiversity, safeguarding and conservation 
Nationally determined contributions 
Bioenergy and biomaterials 
Blue carbon and peatlands 
Climate change adaptation 
Landscape governance 
Gender 
Silvopastoral systems 
Market-based agroforestry-forestry 
Farm-forest policy interface 
Agroecology 
Livelihood trajectory modelling and assessment 
Inclusive finance and business models 
Innovating finance for sustainable landscapes 
Public and private commitments to zero deforestation 
Orphan tree crops 
Effectiveness of approaches to sustainable supply 
Quality of FTA research for development 
Sentinel landscapes 
Foresight 
Seeds and seedlings delivery systems 
Smallholder tree-crop commodities 
