Kalimantan Forests and Climate Partnership (KFCP) Design ...

1.3 IMPLEMENTATION APPROACH
The KFCP is being implemented in two distinct but integrated phases:
Early Implementation Phase (1 January to 30 June 2009). These activities lay the foundation
for full-scale implementation to socialise REDD, create a socioeconomic baseline, design a GHG
estimation and monitoring system, build the institutional framework for the KFCP at the
province and district levels, and complete the design of the overall activity. These activities are
carried out by implementing partners, consultants, and the Peat and GHG Working Group, under
the direction of the Partnership Office (PO).
Implementation Phase (1 July 2009 to 30 June 2012). The Managing Contractor (MC) takes over
implementation of the KFCP under the direction of the KFCP Coordinator. These dedicated
management resources permit rapid scaling up of implementation activities based on the
knowledge and groundwork created during the Early Implementation Phase. The Facility Design
Document identifies an initial ‗Through COP 15 Phase‘ where emphasis is on capturing
knowledge relevant to REDD while continuing to pursue implementation in all components
aggressively.
The KFCP implementation strategy is designed to deliver both development results and learning results
with an emphasis on adaptability and flexibility. The ability to move seamlessly from early
implementation activities to implementation is crucially important given the relatively short three-year
life of the activity. The immediate need is to capture information from the early implementation phase
and the first few months of the implementation phase to inform international discussions and technical
meetings prior to negotiations on REDD at COP 15 in December 2009.
1.3.1 Logic of the KFCP Intervention Strategy
All KFCP interventions in concert aim to reduce deforestation and degradation of peat swamp forest,
primarily by reducing fire risk and mitigating the frequency and severity of fire. Specifically, as
described in Component 1:
Blocking canals to raise the water table and re-wet the peat will inhibit oxidation, including the
incidence and spread of fire.
Re-establishing tree cover in highly degraded areas by encouraging natural regeneration and replanting
will help raise soil moisture levels and humidity, thus further reducing fire risk
especially in dry years.
Introducing livelihood interventions will provide incentives to adopt farming techniques or
other livelihood options equally accessible by women and men that do not require the use of fire
in peatlands nor depend on illegal logging.
Smallholder farmers and larger-scale plantation operators use fire for land clearing. Both the choice of
commercial crops introduced to peatlands (principally oil palm and rubber) and the easy use of fire to
clear land are made possible by the drainage of peatlands by canals, as occurred on a large scale in
Central Kalimantan with the Mega-Rice Project in the mid-1990s. That event fundamentally altered the
ecology and economy of the area, so that people whose livelihoods were adapted to a more-or-less
natural peat swamp forest environment have been forced, in the last decade, to cope with drier and less
stable conditions, becoming more dependent on peatland farming and the use of fire to clear land. The
KFCP fire risk strategy will focus on high risk time periods (e.g., El Niño years) and high risk
areas, such as along canals. If communities perform well in managing fire at priority times and places,
they should receive a performance-based incentive payment in a transparent and gender equitable
manner.
For the KFCP to succeed in significantly restoring the hydrology and ecology of the peat swamp forest
ecosystem to reduce GHG emissions, a new set of incentives to encourage sustainable land use and
forest protection must be developed, offered, and accepted by people in affected communities. The
precise package of economic, social, and policy incentives will vary from one community to another
with differences in their ecological situation (from relatively intact to highly degraded forest) and the
corresponding mix and sequence of technical interventions. This will require programmatic flexibility
and a detailed, local-level understanding of the perceived benefits of current, unsustainable practices and
4 KALIMANTAN FORESTS AND CLIMATE PARTNERSHIP (KFCP) DESIGN DOCUMENT