No Silver Bullet for Combating Deforestation

Article published in the January 2008 edition of Development Today

Tom Griffiths

During the UN climate change talks in Bali in December 2007, Norway publicly pledged to spend NOK 3 billion annually to support developing countries fight deforestation and help reduce global CO2 emissions. At this stage there is scant information on precisely how the funds will be used.

Development and Environment Minister Erik Solheim has however mentioned "alternative" forms of agriculture and rainforest policing, especially among countries that lack the capacity to protect their forests. The Norwegian government is still to make a decision about a possible international mechanism to allocate the funds, which officials indicate might be hosted under either the UN system or the World Bank Group.

There are serious risks associated with spending large sums of money on deforestation without a deep analysis of the causes of deforestation in each developing country. Simply financing more policing to keep people out of protected areas is no solution and risks supporting a regressive move back to "guns and guards" conservation. Talk of using the new mega-forest fund to equip forest police without explanation about what policing would be supported and why is deeply worrying. Too often it is forest dwellers and forest-dependent communities that are unjustly penalised by such schemes, while large-scale commercial and official forest destroyers are overlooked.

Experience shows that forest-policy making is complex. Government forest protection agencies often suffer from poor governance and corruption. In many countries, outdated forest conservation laws and policies still fail to recognise the customary rights of indigenous and local communities, promoting resettlement outside parks and prohibiting traditional subsistence farming, hunting and fishing inside protected forest areas.

Unless there is meaningful particip-ation of forest peoples, even well intentioned global forest policy initiatives risk being imposed on local communities without proper consideration of their rights and interests. It is thus essential that new international forest programmes learn from past mistakes. They must be based on promoting good governance in forest conservation and must establish innovative mechanisms for full and effective participation at all levels of the initiative by the peoples who live in and depend on forests.

As Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, Chair of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, has noted, there is a moral and legal imperative that indigenous peoples be fully involved in designing, implementing and evaluating initiatives funded by the Norwegian funds. Programmes must include activities to ensure indigenous peoples can legally secure their forest lands and territories. "There have to be adequate controls to make sure Norwegian-funded programmes fully respect our rights as defined in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples," she says.

The Norwegian funds should be used to promote forest protection through good governance and support for sustainable traditional practices of indigenous peoples who are the guardians of the tropical forest in so many countries. There must be safeguards to ensure local benefits are received and to prevent funds being used by some governments to support overzealous forest guards, exclusionary forest protection schemes or "alternative livelihood" programmes that risk pushing traditional forest dwellers out of forests and undermining their livelihoods, cultures and way of life. If the proper rights-based standards, accountability and oversight mechanisms are put in place first, then there is an opportunity to do good for forests and forest peoples.

In a separate statement in Bali, the Norwegian government also announced its plan to contribute USD 5 million to the World Bank's conten-tious Forest Carbon Partnership Facility that will promote carbon trading to finance forest schemes to tackle deforestation. At the public launch of the Facility by World Bank President Robert Zoellick in Bali, statements by indigenous peoples' leaders and NGOs roundly condemned the World Bank for so far failing to consult with forest peoples.

Forest peoples we have spoken to have grave reservations about the capacity of the World Bank to take the lead on deforestation issues based on problems with the Bank's track record in countries like the DRC and in Asia.

The Bank's emphasis on carbon trading is rejected by many (though not all) forest movements and civil society organisations in the South and North. Critics of carbon trading complain that it does not tackle the root cause of climate change, suffers from ethical and scientific flaws, and is being used by big business and governments as a "smokescreen" to delay legislation and policy reforms to cut greenhouse gas emissions at source. For all these reasons it would be disappointing if the Norwegian funds were captured by the World Bank Group. This would be bad news for forests and forest peoples.

Civil society organisations are therefore pressing the Norwegian government to ensure further funds are not committed to the Facility and that this Bank initiative is fire walled to keep it separate from the proposed Norwegian-led avoided deforestation fund. The hope is that this will be developed in a collaborative way with civil society and forest peoples from the North and South.