forestry and landscapes: solutions for sustainable development

Forestry and LandscapesSolutions for Sustainable Development

Peter Holmgren Director General, CIFOR

Bogor, 17 February 2017

Past and projected (wanted) trends

19601970

19801990

20002010

20202030

20402050

20600

50

100

150

200

250

GDP/capitaFood productionCO2 emissionsNOT food insecureFood priceFood insecure

Forests.What is the problem?

Real-world issues?or

the way we frame problems and engineer ”solutions”?

Framing exercise 1

Prob-lem

100 Mt/d GHG emissions – Major Problem 1,500 Mt/d GPP from photosynthesis – Major Opportunity!

Opportunity!

Framing exercise 2

This is not only a chain saw.It is also a value-chain saw.

Framing exercise 3

FIRES IN INDONESIA 2015• Add picture of kalimantan here (irresistible news) Framing exercise 4

NORTHERN HEADLINES WERE OFTEN ABOUT CO2 EMISSIONS AND HABITATS

• How Indonesia's Fires Made it the Biggest Climate Polluter (Bloomberg 29 Oct)

• Southeast Asia's haze crisis: A 'crime against humanity’ (CNN 29 Oct)

• How to Save Indonesia’s Forests (NYT 23 Oct)

• Indonesian forest fires on track to emit more CO2 than UK (The Guardian 7 Oct)

• South East Asia haze: Orangutans at risk in Indonesia fires (BBC 19 Oct)

• Indonesia- Massive Fires and Carbon Emissions (Canada Free Press (19 Jan)

• Haze threatens Singapore Formula 1 race (BBC 16 Sep)

• With Latest Fires Crisis, Indonesia Surpasses Russia as World’s Fourth-Largest Emitter (WRI 29 Oct)

• Indonesia’s Fire Outbreaks Producing More Daily Emissions than Entire US Economy (WRI 16 Oct)

NEWS REPORTING FOR WHOSE AGENDA?

THE NORTHERN EMISSION FOCUS IS ETHICALLY QUESTIONABLE

2.6 million ha of land burnt and $15-30 billions of economic losses

43 million people exposed to haze

½ million victims of acute respiratory infections

19 people reported dead Estimated 100,000

premature deaths

Bad GodesbergRhine valley,Germanyca 1800 – 2016

Think long-term.

Framing exercise 5

The new global assessments and the forest

Like the blind men, global forest assessments fail to provide a unified picture

Framing exercise 6

Despite the political attention on deforestation over past decades - this is the sharpest global picture in official statistics.- and it isn’t even deforestation!

Selected problem-oriented framings that can be problematic

1. The Environment-Problem-Corner preference

2. North-Knows-Best

3. Top-down, Global-Overriding-Local

4. Sector silos and dichotomization

5. Silver bullet short-term approaches

6. False sense of knowing (cf post-truth)

Alternative framings.

Opportunities.

SDG’S – NEW OPPORTUNITIES FOR INTEGRATION- AND IT WORKS ON ALL SCALES: LOCAL TO GLOBAL!

But… There is a risk that also the SDGs are boxed-in

Redefining Forestry: Fundamentals for achieving the SDG’sfrom CIFOR/Daju Resosudarmo’s presentation to UNGA Feb 2014

Food, nutrition and health

Water

Energy

Housing

Livelihoods and employment

Climate change adaptation and mitigation

Biodiversity conservation

Resilience and safety nets

To environmental and economic external shocks

CIFOR Strategy2016-2025

alignedwith all17 SDGs

REFRAMED AND REDEFINED

BROADENING THE FRAME: LANDSCAPES AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Sustainable landscapes are fundamental for our future

Sector and institution fragmentation hinder us from finding good landscape solutions

A generic landscape framework can provide leverage for scaling up sustainable development

We must embrace and appreciate local ownership and diversity in priorities and solutions

Forestry should be addressed and applied in this context – this is a challenge for current institutions (cf SDG17)

The Landscape Approach – integrated solutions for people across sectors

“Despite some barriers to implementation, a landscape approach has considerable potential to meet social and environmental objectives at local scales while aiding national commitments to addressing ongoing global challenges.” Reed et al. 2016, Global Change Biology.

So, complex framing of forests.

How can we then effectively

measure success?

without - as usual - complicatingthings too much.

My list – Forest progress measures

1. Amount of biomass in forests (or better – landscapes)

2. Value of primary forest products (marketed and not)

3. Number of legal conflicts over forest resources

If these three are all stable or improving,

we have a good-enough confirmation

that forests increasingly contribute

to sustainable development.

CIFOR WAS ESTABLISHED IN 1993- AN INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATION WITH A GLOBAL REACH

• Center without walls• Landscapes without boundaries• SDG’s without silos