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Constructive critique. This book provides 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.
REDD+ as envisioned has not been tested at scale. Results-based payment, the novel feature of REDD+, has gone untested. International funding (both public and private) remains scarce, and demand through carbon markets is lacking.
Better national enabling conditions. Over 50 countries have included REDD+ in their NDCs and developed national REDD+ strategies. REDD+ has improved countries monitoring capacities and understanding of drivers, increased stakeholder involvement, and provided a platform to secure indigenous and community land rights all key conditions for addressing deforestation and forest degradation.
Modest forest and social impacts. Local REDD+ initiatives have achieved limited but positive outcomes for forests. Well-being impacts have been modest and mixed, but have proved more likely to be positive when incentives are included.
National coordination, with a positive narrative. Forest-based mitigation strategies must now be mainstreamed across sectors and levels of government. A strong positive narrative on how forests contribute to economic development and climate goals could boost forest-based mitigation, in spite of the current political uncertainties in key emitting countries.
Evolving REDD+ and new initiatives. REDD+ has evolved, and new initiatives have emerged to support its broader objective: private sector sustainability commitments, climate-smart agriculture, forest and landscape restoration, and more holistic jurisdictional approaches working across legally defined territories.
Impacts of forestation on water and soils in the Andes: What do we know?
Impacts of forestation on water and soils in the Andes: What do we know?
14 December, 2018
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Key messages
This brief summarizes the findings of a systematic review on the impacts of forestation on water and soils in the Andes (detailed in Bonnesoeur et al., 2018).
Exotic tree plantations and, to a lesser extent, native forests consume water and therefore often reduce the total water supply to downstream users in most Andean regions.
Only in areas immersed in clouds, such as in the eastern slope of the Andes, might native forests increase downstream water availability compared to other land covers.
Decreased total water supply could be acceptable to many users if it confers other benefits, such as increased water availability during the dry season or a reduction in water turbidity.
When trees, including exotic species, are planted on degraded soils (bare and/or compacted soils), they can improve soil infiltration, reduce peak flows and control erosion.
Exotic tree plantations on well-conserved grasslands (páramos, jalcas, punas) have detrimental impacts on total water supply and hydrological regulation.
Existing native forests provide excellent water regulation and erosion control, more than mature tree plantations.
As restoring degraded native forests does not necessarily recover original hydrological services, the conservation of existing forests must be a priority for watershed management.
The hydrological impacts of native species forestation, however, have largely been overlooked and require further research.
Long-term hydrological monitoring and research are necessary to fill the multiple data and knowledge gaps identified in this review.
Sustainable intensification of dairy production can reduce forest disturbance in Kenyan montane forests
Sustainable intensification of dairy production can reduce forest disturbance in Kenyan montane forests
28 September, 2018
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Increasing demand for food and the shortage of arable land call for sustainable intensification of farming, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa where food insecurity is still a major concern. Kenya needs to intensify its dairy production to meet the increasing demand for milk. At the same time, the country has set national climate mitigation targets and has to implement land use practices that reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from both agriculture and forests. This study analysed for the first time the drivers of forest disturbance and their relationship with dairy intensification across the largest montane forest of Kenya. To achieve this, a forest disturbance detection approach was applied by using Landsat time series and empirical data from forest disturbance surveys. Farm indicators and farm types derived from a household survey were used to test the effects of dairy intensification on forest disturbance for different farm neighbourhood sizes (r = 2-5 km). About 18% of the forest area was disturbed over the period 2010-2016. Livestock grazing and firewood extraction were the dominant drivers of forest disturbance at 75% of the forest disturbance spots sampled. Higher on-farm cattle stocking rates and firewood collection were associated with 1-10% increased risk of forest disturbance across farm neighbourhood sizes. In contrast, higher milk yields, increased supplementation with concentrated feeds and more farm area allocated to fodder production were associated with 1-7 % reduced risk of forest disturbance across farm neighbourhood sizes. More intensified farms had a significantly lower impact on forest disturbance than small and resource-poor farms, and large and inefficient farms. Our results show that intensification of smallholder dairy farming leads to both farm efficiency gains and reduced forest disturbance. These results can inform agriculture and forest mitigation policies which target options to reduce GHG emission intensities and the risk of carbon leakage.
New legislation advances community rights in forest management in Ethiopia
New legislation advances community rights in forest management in Ethiopia
24 August, 2018
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The government supports gum collection from acacia trees as a source of income for Ethiopians. Photo by O. Girard/CIFOR
The Ethiopian government has a big dream: restoring 22 million hectares of degraded lands and forests by 2030.
By doing so, the country aims not only to increase tree cover and restore degraded forests, but also to significantly enhance the forestry sector’s contribution to agricultural production systems, water and energy; to improve food and nutritional security; and to create more opportunities for employment and household income.
It is a bold and laudable pledge, made as part of the 2011 Bonn Challenge and the 2014 New York Climate Summit’s goal of restoring 350 million hectares worldwide by 2030. But what’s the best way to make it a reality?
With some 80% of Ethiopians living in rural areas, one approach is to pour resources into forest protection, rehabilitation and conservation by enlisting smallholder farmer labor for the cause mainly through food or cash for work programs. Until now, that has been the predominant method of action of projects supported by development partners. Meanwhile, the government’s approach has been to increase awareness of smallholders on the need to responsibly manage land and other natural resources and systematically mobilize these rural communities to provide free labor for landscape restoration tasks through annual soil and water conservation work and tree planting campaigns.
But either way, restoration must also create socioeconomic incentives for this massive population that depends on these landscapes for their livelihoods. There is a growing recognition that communities should be able to reap more economic benefits and have better control over the land they are restoring – both within restoration processes, and in general after the land has been restored.
To this end, a new forest law was enacted in January this year that is a significant step in the right direction, says Habtemariam Kassa, Team Leader of Forests and Human Well-being Research at the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) who supported efforts of the ministry in the process of revising the national forest law. The 2018 National Forest Law – a revised version of the 2007 forest law – now clearly recognizes the rights of communities and acknowledges their role in managing natural forests and establishing plantations, without unduly compromising ecological services or biodiversity.
Ato Kebede Yimam, State Minister of the Forestry Sector, says the new law contains the following three key changes:
Recognizing participatory forest management as a vehicle to enhance the role of communities in sharing responsibilities and benefits of managing natural forests in accordance with agreed-upon management plans;
Providing incentives for private forest developers through mechanisms such as lease-free land, better access to land use and forest ownership certificates, and tax holiday until and including the first harvest (for private investors and associations) and the second harvest (for communities); and
Putting severe penalties on those who expand farming into forests; tamper with forest boundaries; or set fires, harm endangered species, settle, or hunt or graze animals in state, communal, association or private forests.
Depending on the definition of ‘forest’ used, forests cover between 5% and 15% of Ethiopia’s area. Photo my M. Edliadi/CIFOR
Yimam says his ministry has been working to socialize the new law since it was enacted in January 2018. The revisions were based on inputs from policy- and decision-makers at a range of levels, as well as CIFOR scientists – which, Yimam says, make the law an impressive example of science and politics coming together for the betterment of a landscape.
“The law, recognizing the need to strengthen the role of the state in protecting biodiversity rich forests with global and national significance, has identified reserved forests where access is strictly limited,” says Yimam. “On the other hand, the law intends to promote the socioeconomic contribution of forests to the surrounding communities and to local and national economies.
“It is designed to significantly enhance the involvement and ownership of communities and associations in the establishment of plantation forests, in the restoration of degraded forests, and in responsible management and sustainable use of natural forests.”
CHANGE OF SCENERY
According to Kassa, a key shift in the new law is its recognition of the need to maximize socioeconomic benefits of all forest types to the surrounding communities. In the past, when communities managed natural forests under participatory forest management paradigms, “the only thing that they could use were non-timber forest products [NTFP], because most experts considered that cutting [down] indigenous trees was a forbidden act,” Kassa describes. So, the economic returns for managing forests were not really worth communities’ efforts. As such, “we recommended that the law allow a certain level of timber harvesting in natural forests based on forest management plan to be developed,” he says.
To some senior foresters invited to discuss the law in draft phases, this sounded undesirable and even dangerous: “There was a certain group who were really against some of these changes, because they thought that it would open up all natural forests for individuals and communities,” says Kassa. So a new article was created, whereby forests of significant biodiversity are demarcated, and treated as ‘no-go zones.’ “This also places responsibility on the state for protecting biodiversity-rich forests, which wasn’t so obvious before,” he says.
The 2007 law only made mention of state and private forests. This meant that all restored forest land was treated as state property, so even after decades of restoration effort by a given community, the state could reallocate the land to other users. This tenure uncertainty demotivated communities to invest in forest landscape restoration. Since they didn’t clearly stand to benefit from landscape restoration and tree-planting, there was little incentive for them to take care of state-owned lands.
The new law, in contrast, grants rights of communities to manage and benefit from forests “very explicitly,” says Yimam. It does so by recognizing four categories of forest – state, private, community and association – thereby opening up new avenues for involvement and ownership. “So where you have degraded forest, the community can organize themselves, and with the approval of the relevant authority, can have all the responsibility of managing that forest as a community forest,” he explains.
“When you have groups of women or unemployed people, you can organize them to establish plantations on degraded hillsides, or even reforest and manage degraded forest, and this can be recognized as an association forest. Communities can then also stand to benefit financially from the carbon credits available for reforestation and forest preservation.”
REVISION TO REALITY
These new developments were hard-won. Kassa and his colleagues at CIFOR attempted to contribute similar content to the law’s predecessor in 2007, but then, forestry issues fell under the Ministry of Agriculture’s jurisdiction, and the sector was not getting the political attention it deserved. “We felt we were not really being listened to,” recounts Kassa.
When the Ministry of Environment and Forests (now the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change) was established in 2013, CIFOR staff and other national researchers pushed hard for it to confront and address the limitations of the 2007 law, advocating that forest sector development could bring a host of economic benefits as well as help the country attain its national and international restoration commitments. The ministry listened, set up a committee to work with the scientists, and revised the law according to their technical feedback.
However, putting a law to work is always a challenge. Kassa says the ministry and relevant regional authorities will need significant support to translate the law into concrete actions on the ground. One issue is expertise. The focus of forestry training has thus far been on enhancing the protection function of forests rather than the livelihoods of forest dependent communities, says Kassa, and now leaders and experts in forestry will need new knowledge and skills.
What’s more, “Ethiopia is a federal state, and the various regional governments have been forming different institutional arrangements to manage the forestry sector”, says Yimam. “We need to develop the understanding that the regions can produce their own guidelines to clarify and specify certain articles, but all these cannot go beyond or against the national forest law.”
Both Yimam and Kassa are hopeful that rural communities and forests throughout the country will soon experience the benefits of the new law’s possibilities. “Ethiopia’s 2018 National Forest Law is a really progressive law, and if it is implemented properly it is going to make a big difference” says Yimam.
“The next step is to support the efforts of the Ethiopian government as it attempts to put in place appropriate structures at different levels, redefine the roles of experts and build their capacity to actualize the rights of communities and other forest managers provided by the law,” concludes Kassa.
By Monica Evans, originally published at CIFOR’s Forests News.
For more information on this topic, please contact Habtemariam Kassa at h.kassa@cgiar.org.
New legislation advances community rights in forest management in Ethiopia
New legislation advances community rights in forest management in Ethiopia
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The government supports gum collection from acacia trees as a source of income for Ethiopians. Photo by O. Girard/CIFOR
The Ethiopian government has a big dream: restoring 22 million hectares of degraded lands and forests by 2030.
By doing so, the country aims not only to increase tree cover and restore degraded forests, but also to significantly enhance the forestry sector’s contribution to agricultural production systems, water and energy; to improve food and nutritional security; and to create more opportunities for employment and household income.
It is a bold and laudable pledge, made as part of the 2011 Bonn Challenge and the 2014 New York Climate Summit’s goal of restoring 350 million hectares worldwide by 2030. But what’s the best way to make it a reality?
With some 80% of Ethiopians living in rural areas, one approach is to pour resources into forest protection, rehabilitation and conservation by enlisting smallholder farmer labor for the cause mainly through food or cash for work programs. Until now, that has been the predominant method of action of projects supported by development partners. Meanwhile, the government’s approach has been to increase awareness of smallholders on the need to responsibly manage land and other natural resources and systematically mobilize these rural communities to provide free labor for landscape restoration tasks through annual soil and water conservation work and tree planting campaigns.
But either way, restoration must also create socioeconomic incentives for this massive population that depends on these landscapes for their livelihoods. There is a growing recognition that communities should be able to reap more economic benefits and have better control over the land they are restoring – both within restoration processes, and in general after the land has been restored.
To this end, a new forest law was enacted in January this year that is a significant step in the right direction, says Habtemariam Kassa, Team Leader of Forests and Human Well-being Research at the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) who supported efforts of the ministry in the process of revising the national forest law. The 2018 National Forest Law – a revised version of the 2007 forest law – now clearly recognizes the rights of communities and acknowledges their role in managing natural forests and establishing plantations, without unduly compromising ecological services or biodiversity.
Ato Kebede Yimam, State Minister of the Forestry Sector, says the new law contains the following three key changes:
Recognizing participatory forest management as a vehicle to enhance the role of communities in sharing responsibilities and benefits of managing natural forests in accordance with agreed-upon management plans;
Providing incentives for private forest developers through mechanisms such as lease-free land, better access to land use and forest ownership certificates, and tax holiday until and including the first harvest (for private investors and associations) and the second harvest (for communities); and
Putting severe penalties on those who expand farming into forests; tamper with forest boundaries; or set fires, harm endangered species, settle, or hunt or graze animals in state, communal, association or private forests.
Depending on the definition of ‘forest’ used, forests cover between 5% and 15% of Ethiopia’s area. Photo my M. Edliadi/CIFOR
Yimam says his ministry has been working to socialize the new law since it was enacted in January 2018. The revisions were based on inputs from policy- and decision-makers at a range of levels, as well as CIFOR scientists – which, Yimam says, make the law an impressive example of science and politics coming together for the betterment of a landscape.
“The law, recognizing the need to strengthen the role of the state in protecting biodiversity rich forests with global and national significance, has identified reserved forests where access is strictly limited,” says Yimam. “On the other hand, the law intends to promote the socioeconomic contribution of forests to the surrounding communities and to local and national economies.
“It is designed to significantly enhance the involvement and ownership of communities and associations in the establishment of plantation forests, in the restoration of degraded forests, and in responsible management and sustainable use of natural forests.”
CHANGE OF SCENERY
According to Kassa, a key shift in the new law is its recognition of the need to maximize socioeconomic benefits of all forest types to the surrounding communities. In the past, when communities managed natural forests under participatory forest management paradigms, “the only thing that they could use were non-timber forest products [NTFP], because most experts considered that cutting [down] indigenous trees was a forbidden act,” Kassa describes. So, the economic returns for managing forests were not really worth communities’ efforts. As such, “we recommended that the law allow a certain level of timber harvesting in natural forests based on forest management plan to be developed,” he says.
To some senior foresters invited to discuss the law in draft phases, this sounded undesirable and even dangerous: “There was a certain group who were really against some of these changes, because they thought that it would open up all natural forests for individuals and communities,” says Kassa. So a new article was created, whereby forests of significant biodiversity are demarcated, and treated as ‘no-go zones.’ “This also places responsibility on the state for protecting biodiversity-rich forests, which wasn’t so obvious before,” he says.
The 2007 law only made mention of state and private forests. This meant that all restored forest land was treated as state property, so even after decades of restoration effort by a given community, the state could reallocate the land to other users. This tenure uncertainty demotivated communities to invest in forest landscape restoration. Since they didn’t clearly stand to benefit from landscape restoration and tree-planting, there was little incentive for them to take care of state-owned lands.
The new law, in contrast, grants rights of communities to manage and benefit from forests “very explicitly,” says Yimam. It does so by recognizing four categories of forest – state, private, community and association – thereby opening up new avenues for involvement and ownership. “So where you have degraded forest, the community can organize themselves, and with the approval of the relevant authority, can have all the responsibility of managing that forest as a community forest,” he explains.
“When you have groups of women or unemployed people, you can organize them to establish plantations on degraded hillsides, or even reforest and manage degraded forest, and this can be recognized as an association forest. Communities can then also stand to benefit financially from the carbon credits available for reforestation and forest preservation.”
REVISION TO REALITY
These new developments were hard-won. Kassa and his colleagues at CIFOR attempted to contribute similar content to the law’s predecessor in 2007, but then, forestry issues fell under the Ministry of Agriculture’s jurisdiction, and the sector was not getting the political attention it deserved. “We felt we were not really being listened to,” recounts Kassa.
When the Ministry of Environment and Forests (now the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change) was established in 2013, CIFOR staff and other national researchers pushed hard for it to confront and address the limitations of the 2007 law, advocating that forest sector development could bring a host of economic benefits as well as help the country attain its national and international restoration commitments. The ministry listened, set up a committee to work with the scientists, and revised the law according to their technical feedback.
However, putting a law to work is always a challenge. Kassa says the ministry and relevant regional authorities will need significant support to translate the law into concrete actions on the ground. One issue is expertise. The focus of forestry training has thus far been on enhancing the protection function of forests rather than the livelihoods of forest dependent communities, says Kassa, and now leaders and experts in forestry will need new knowledge and skills.
What’s more, “Ethiopia is a federal state, and the various regional governments have been forming different institutional arrangements to manage the forestry sector”, says Yimam. “We need to develop the understanding that the regions can produce their own guidelines to clarify and specify certain articles, but all these cannot go beyond or against the national forest law.”
Both Yimam and Kassa are hopeful that rural communities and forests throughout the country will soon experience the benefits of the new law’s possibilities. “Ethiopia’s 2018 National Forest Law is a really progressive law, and if it is implemented properly it is going to make a big difference” says Yimam.
“The next step is to support the efforts of the Ethiopian government as it attempts to put in place appropriate structures at different levels, redefine the roles of experts and build their capacity to actualize the rights of communities and other forest managers provided by the law,” concludes Kassa.
By Monica Evans, originally published at CIFOR’s Forests News.
For more information on this topic, please contact Habtemariam Kassa at h.kassa@cgiar.org.
Understanding gendered innovation processes in forest-based landscapes: Case studies from Indonesia and Kyrgyz Republic
Understanding gendered innovation processes in forest-based landscapes: Case studies from Indonesia and Kyrgyz Republic
19 July, 2018
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An estimated 1.6 billion people depend in part or in full on forests and trees outside forests for their livelihoods. Yet, there are important inequities in the distribution of the benefits forests, trees, and agroforests yield to local people. Gender relations and norms, as fundamental organizing structures across cultures and societies, contribute to shaping the opportunities and constraints of women and men in these (agro)forests, and their ability to benefit from, and contribute to, positive development and environmental change processes. Drawing on data from Indonesia and Kyrgyzstan, this report focuses on how gender norms and agency shape innovation processes in forest, tree, and agroforestry landscapes. The capacity to creatively adapt and innovate to build resilience through natural resource-based livelihood practices is unevenly distributed amongst men, women and young people within communities, and may be constrained by shrinking opportunities in the context of wider structural economic and environmental changes. This aim of this report is to provide a better understanding of how men and women might be supported in exercising their agency in pursuing livelihood goals, independently or with others, in the context of rapidly transforming forest and tree-based landscapes.
The case studies reported here form part of ‘GENNOVATE: Enabling gender equality through agricultural and environmental innovation’; a qualitative comparative research initiative engaging 11 of the Phase I CGIAR Research Programs to examine the gender dimensions of innovations – new agricultural and natural resource management technologies, institutions, and practices. Despite significant historical, socio-political and environmental differences, the five case studies in East Kalimantan, Indonesia, and the case from southwest Kyrgyzstan exhibit pronounced and rapid changes in the relationship between people and forests. Both country contexts are marked by shifts in the relationship between rural and urban livelihood opportunities, forest livelihoods increasingly linked to migration and remittances, and commodification processes intensifying people’s integration into tree-based value chains. In the Indonesia cases, recent transformation is being driven by large scale commercial oil palm investment, which is bringing new wage work opportunities, whilst displacing other forms of livelihoods and resource access. In Kyrgyzstan, integration into the market economy and changing forest tenure regimes are resulting in new opportunities and challenges for different groups of forest dwellers.
Himlal Baral discusses how forests can aid climate change impacts on geographical diversity
Himlal Baral discusses how forests can aid climate change impacts on geographical diversity
08 June, 2018
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Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) Senior Scientist Himlal Baral discusses how forests can aid climate change impacts on geographical diversity during a Q&A on the sidelines of the 2018 Asia-Pacific Rainforest Summit (APRS) in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, for which CIFOR and FTA were science and engagement partners.
Gender lessons for climate initiatives: A comparative study of REDD+ impacts on subjective wellbeing
Gender lessons for climate initiatives: A comparative study of REDD+ impacts on subjective wellbeing
04 May, 2018
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Although REDD+ is primarily a mechanism for reducing carbon emissions from forests, concerns regarding social benefits, wellbeing and gender are increasingly part of its mandate. This is consistent with the Paris Declaration as well as SDG 5 on gender equality and womens empowerment. Critics have argued, however, that REDD+ design, both in policy and projects, does not take gender into account effectively, rather marginalizing women from decision making processes and exacerbating inequalities. Most of that research has been site specific or on single countries. This article uses data from a longitudinal study of subnational REDD+ initiatives in six countries to analyze their gendered impact on perceived wellbeing. Comparative research on subjective wellbeing was conducted at 62 villages participating in 16 REDD+ initiatives and 61 control villages at two periods in time, using a before-after-control-intervention (BACI) design. Focus groups with villagers (68% male) and women (100% female) permit a gendered comparison of definitions of wellbeing and outcomes of initiatives. The results highlight that while definitions of wellbeing overlapped between the two groups, almost half of the womens focus groups thought that having their own source of income was important. Outcomes regarding wellbeing change suggest that perceived wellbeing decreased in REDD+ villages both for villagers as a whole and for women, relative to control villages, but the decrease was much worse for women a decrease that is significantly associated with living in a REDD+ village. These declines may be due to unrealized expectations for REDD+, combined with little attention to gender in REDD+ initiatives, in spite of an important portion (46%) of specific interventions that women view positively. These interventions provide insights into potential ways forward. Overall, however, REDD+ initiatives appear to be repeating past mistakes, with insufficient attention to gender equality and safeguarding womens rights. More effort needs to be paid to ensuring that gender is an integral part of future initiatives to combat climate change in rural communities.
The returnee: Inside the lives of migrant workers from Nepal
The returnee: Inside the lives of migrant workers from Nepal
11 April, 2018
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With seven children and a wife of 21 years, Bahadur believed moving abroad from the village of Nalma in Nepal to Saudi Arabia in order to work was a financially wise choice for his family. All was going well until the news came, six months into his time abroad, that his wife had eloped with someone else, leading Bahadur to returned to his children in Nepal.
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In the village of Nalma, Nepal, scientist Bimbika Sijapati Basnett from the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) talks about her research on the impact of migration on lives and landscapes.
Presented by David Solis, Dawn Ward and Peter Cronkleton of the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) at the XXXV International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association, April 29 – May 1, 2017, Lima, Peru.
Bridging research and development to generate science and solutions
Bridging research and development to generate science and solutions
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A commonly held view is that trees in landscapes act as evapotranspirators, through which water is transpired and lost. But research now shows that rather than disappearing, this water falls back as rain – either over the same area or elsewhere – in a process dubbed ‘rainfall recycling’.
The CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA) participated in various ways at the recent Global Landscapes Forum (GLF) in Bonn, Germany, including in a discussion forum titled ‘Rainfall Recycling’ as a Landscape Function: Connecting SDGs 6, 13 and 15. The session examined the role of forests in regulating the water cycle and looked at research that suggests vegetation plays a critical role in the frequency and intensity of rainfall. It also explored how this can affect land restoration, water management and climate change adaptation.
“Forests have been long known for having very important influences on climate change through, mainly, the carbon cycle,” said FTA Director Vincent Gitz, who moderated part of the discussion. “What these findings tell us now is that we will need to consider the role of forests on the water cycle, and then the effects on local, regional and continental climates.”
Following the discussion, Gitz spoke about this holistic view of the water cycle, the potential implications of the research on policy and action, as well as FTA’s role as a research-for-development partnership.
What is FTA’s role in research for development?
The Segama River is seen from a viewing area in Sabah, Malaysia. Forests and trees in the water cycle are part of new insights on ‘rainfall recycling’. Photo by Greg Girard/CIFOR
The CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry is the largest research-for-development partnership to tackle the important issues of the contribution of forests, trees and agroforestry to sustainable development, climate change, addressing food security and working toward sustainable landscapes.
‘Landscape’ is a very wide concept. FTA science encompasses work from genetic resources to livelihoods, value chains, and impacts – including wide, large-scale impacts such as climate change – and how they all interact altogether in a landscape. FTA brings research in development, meaning research that is done with development actors and embedded into development programs, taking into account the needs and the expectations of stakeholders and integrating them in the research being carried forward.
FTA, being a global partnership, brings solutions that are suited to different kinds of situations across the world. And it bridges the world of research and the world of development actors for the cogeneration of science and solutions.
FTA provides science and knowledge and an evidence base to discussions between stakeholders here at the GLF on sometimes very difficult issues or very controversial issues. Here at this GLF in Bonn we emphasize three main topics.
The first one is the role of forests and trees in the water cycle, which we call the new science of ‘rainfall recycling’. The second one is about forest landscape restoration and providing a set of solutions to understand what tree to plant where, in which context, and also how agroforestry can help land restoration and promote food security at the same time. The last point is about finance and how finance actors and investments can orient the way value chains impact landscapes, toward sustainable landscapes.
What outcomes did you see from FTA’s discussion forum at GLF?
Clouds pass over homes on the banks of the Belayan River in East Kalimantan, Indonesia. Photo by Nanang Sujana/CIFOR
The discussion managed to bring stakeholders and policymakers up to date with the latest scientific findings on rainfall recycling, so that they could first learn from the new science but also consider how these elements can be taken on board in the different institutional frameworks they are dealing with, be it water management, forest management or land management.
Vegetation has been known for some time to influence the terrestrial water cycle on the ground – precipitation translating to runoff, the issues of flood control, etc. What is less known is that vegetation and land cover influence the atmospheric part of the water cycle, meaning that there is a kind of a paradigm shift from a situation where trees and forests matter for water-basin management to a situation where trees and forests matter for the management of rainfall at different scales.
It is a different perception of how water is being produced and consumed in an ecosystem and how we can better manage ecosystems for providing water resources to agriculture for climate change adaptation.
What are the implications of these new scientific insights on climate, land, water, and related policies and actions?
These insights may have important implications for either climate policies, land policies or water policies. Forests have long been known to have very important influences on climate change through, mainly, the carbon cycle. What these findings tell us now is that we will need to consider the role of forests on the water cycle, and then the effects on local, regional and continental climates.
These kinds of discussions at the GLF are important because they help, first, different stakeholders understand the different perspectives on the technical issue, and then also share views and their concerns and expectations amongst themselves.
And one other important point in the GLF is that it is not a formal negotiation forum. So it enables us to distill new ideas, bring innovations to the table, that can then be matured, honed and brought up into other more formal kinds of platforms, either at national level, with government, or at international level, such as at international conventions.
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As tenure laws change in Maluku, Indonesia, work is underway to recognize customary rights to forests. Researchers are using a participatory mapping technique to work with communities and their customary leaders to facilitate tenure reform that benefits forests and people.
The discussion aimed to shed new light on the role of forests and trees in the climate debate, building on a scientific review paper about the relationship between forests and water titled Trees, forests and water: Cool insights for a hot world, and an online symposium organized by FTA in May 2017.
It also discussed preliminary highlights of IUFRO’s current Global Forest Expert Panel (GFEP) on Forests and Water, which is expected to issue a policy relevant global assessment report in July 2018. At the GLF, participants discussed how these research findings should be reflected in policy making.
“We are going to discuss something that might have the potential to change the narrative […] about forests and trees in landscapes in relation to climate change, land management and other issues,” IUFRO Executive Director Alexander Buck said in opening the session.
“In many parts of the world, local people, if you ask them, are convinced that forests and trees not only depend on rainfall, but they also play a critical role in actually generating it,” Buck added.
He explained that science is increasingly generating insights that confirm this perception from local people, describing rainfall recycling as “a phenomenon in which forests […] and trees influence the transport of water over distant locations.”
“Experts will also present some emerging highlights from a global scientific assessment looking at the interactions between forests and water,” Buck added, referring to the GFEP, which is coordinated by IUFRO.
Audience members respond to questions during “Rainfall Recycling as a Landscape Function: Connecting SDGs 6, 13 and 15” at the Global Landscapes Forum in Bonn, Germany. Photo by Pilar Valbuena/GLF
David Ellison, the lead author of the review article Trees, forests and water: cool insights for a hot world, spoke first on the concept of hydrological space. He addressed how water is transported across land, describing continental evapotranspiration as feeding an important share of terrestrial precipitation. Thus, increasing forest cover can lead to increased precipitation and runoff, and spatial organization also matters.
Describing water in the Blue Nile Basin, of which a large share originates in the West African rainforest, he explained why land use, forests and the large-scale water cycle are so important when it comes to rainfall.
Aster Gebrekirstos of the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) then discussed tools and equipment that can be used to show how trees play a role in the water cycle.
By measuring isotopes in tree rings it is possible to understand how fast trees have grown in the past, and where the rain absorbed by trees comes from, Gebrekirstos explained. The Amazon was shown to be generating its own rainy season, while in Bolivia more than 50 percent of rain comes from evapotranspiration.
“If we plant trees in Ethiopia, it will have a positive influence in Burkina Faso,” she said, by way of example. “Trees are really contributing to the water cycle, but climate change is also influencing trees and forests.”
“Trees are history books when we are able to analyze their history of growth and isotopes,” Van Noordwijk agreed. “We can tell something about where their water has come from.”
Although there are tradeoffs in planting trees in dry areas, Bargues-Tobella showed how new theories enable the determination of an optimum level for tree cover with respect to groundwater recharge, as evidenced in Burkina Faso.
The discussion then progressed to implications that this new science might have for climate, land, water and related policies and actions, in a second part moderated by Paola Ovando Pol of Eawag, the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, who is also a member of the GFEP on Forests and Water.
In this section, Van Noordwijk stated: “Within the world there’s a lot of debate about climate change, and the convention about climate change is, other than what people think, not a convention about climate. It’s a convention about greenhouse gases, one of the major things that changes climates.”
Panelists discuss forests, trees and the water cycle at the Global Landscapes Forum in Bonn, Germany. Photo by Pilar Valbuena/GLF
Greenhouse gases come from the use of fossil fuel, and also deforestation, he explained.
There is an elaborate framework on how climate change, because of increased greenhouse gases, leads to changes in ocean temperatures, which in turn leads to changes in how much moisture is around, leading to changes in rainfall, he suggested.
Van Noordwijk then explained that forests and trees outside forests also influence rainfall through several feedback loops, from local to continental levels, as evidenced in Latin America, the African continent and Southeast Asia.
With this new knowledge, the relation between climate, forests, water and people looks different, he said. It is not captured in current policy frameworks, but has important consequences.
The “missing middle — the relation between vegetation, forests and rainfall” shows there is a much more direct link between land-use change and rainfall than through the long route of climate change and ocean temperatures, he added. “Now our message to the policymakers is: we have enough evidence that it exists, we’re working on the details.”
Daniel Murdiyarso, principal scientist at the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), posed the question of what forests can do for water and climate. They can promote rain, transfer vapor, recharge groundwater, moderate flooding and cool air, he suggested.
The world needs a new way of governing forests, he said, citing watershed approaches, links to climate objectives such as REDD+, Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), and National Adaptation Plans (NAPs), as well as sustainable forest management.
Rounding out the second part, senior researcher Holger Hoff of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) said the link to policies was the new aspect of the work. He covered how to add to existing frameworks, targeting methods to audiences, triggering action, identifying win-wins and increasing complexity.
Finally, in the third and final part of the discussion, FTA Director Vincent Gitz asked the audience “who can do what” with this knowledge, in terms of optimizing the contribution of forests and trees to the regulation of the water cycle, increasing resilience and therefore providing ways for landscapes – and the people in them – to adapt to climate change.
In a lively audience discussion, various points were raised about the respective roles of different actors. Science and research have a special responsibility in terms of being clear about domains of uncertainty, especially when quantification of effects is concerned.
Research has a role in clearly explaining science, as well as its limits, to policymakers. Science also needs to be clear about knowledge gaps. These include, for instance, whether there are different effects for different tree species (especially indigenous species), and about the range of scale of these effects.
“It is all about better understanding these ecosystem services, giving them proper value, finding ways to account for them in current incentives and regulation schemes, and creating spaces for them in policy debates,” Gitz said following the forum.
The next step for this science-policy interaction will be the release of IUFRO’s GFEP report on forests and water in July, and upcoming discussions about the Sustainable Development Goals in New York.
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 
