Conserving natural ecosystems is one of the most cost-effective and equitable measures for fighting climate change and ensuring the resilience of rural livelihoods. This was a key message at the “Landscape approaches to mitigation and adaptation” learning event at Forest Day 3 on 13 December 2009. While Forest Day aimed to ensure forests are high on the agenda for future climate outcomes, and making these outcomes work beyond Copenhagen, panelists and participants in this learning event called for a broader, “whole-landscape” approach to ensure carbon, biodiversity, water, food and income benefits.
The learning event, which was co-hosted by the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), The Nature Conservancy, and the World Bank, brought together tools and experiences for ecosystem management that can be applied in the context of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD), a hot topic at the Copenhagen climate conference.
Meine van Noordwijk presenting PRESA research at Forest Day 3, Copenhagen, December 2009
Trevor Sandwith of The Nature Conservancy showed that healthy ecosystems do not obey governance boundaries, and generally support a complex balance between different ecosystem services such as carbon storage, biodiversity, watershed functions and providing fuel and food. Current REDD approaches still largely look at individual sectors (i.e. forestry) but could be more effective if considered within an adaptable landscape solutions.
Meine van Noordwijk of the World Agroforestry Centre shared experiences from the Sasumua catchment in Central Kenya, where water is the biggest question that affects the local farmers as well as the thirsty city of Nairobi. In a place like Sasumua, it’s clear that local-level costs and benefits must be achieved before global objectives can be met. People are not interested in carbon, but rather the water co-benefits that would come with improved land management. “When dealing with farmers,” said van Noordwijk, “consider carbon a co-benefit, and talk to them about water, about trees they can use, about profitability.” He stressed that Locally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (LAMAs) must be linked with Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs) as well as global targets (GAMAs) (more on this). The work in Sasumua is part of a larger World Agroforestry Centre project on Pro-poor Rewards for Environmental Services in Africa (PRESA), which aims to facilitate African participation in markets for environmental services including carbon.
Dr. Robert Zomer, from the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) described how a holistic landscape approach has proven most appropriate for the Hindu Kush-Himalaya region, where the carbon mitigation potential lies in land uses outside of the traditionally defined forest. In this context, a whole-landscape approach is most beneficial.
Although the Copenhagen meeting failed to produce a new climate deal, significant progress was made on ensuring that a future deal will take into account deforestation, forest degradation and sustainable management of forests (known collectively as REDD-plus). Moreover, the important role played by agricultural landscapes in reducing emissions and storing carbon, also gained visibility, particularly at Agriculture and Rural Development Day (convened by the Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security programme of the CGIAR). Organizers of FD3 and Agriculture day released a joint statement of outcomes (70KB PDF), further confirming that these areas are not only important, but deeply interlinked.
Dr. Dennis Garrity of the World Agroforestry Centre, concluded the landscape approaches learning event, by suggesting that the positive momentum from Agriculture Day and Forest Day be directed into a common day ‘Rural Landscape’ day in 2010.
Download the final statement from the “Landscape approaches to mitigation and adaptation” learning event. Download PDF (10 kb)
For a full summary of Forest Day, read the Earth Negotiations Bulletin Summary
View and download the presentations