Climate Action 2016-2017

Women in Jambi, Indonesia, ready to harvest in an area where villagers have the legal right to
manage state forest.
solutions in individual sectors and towards more
integrated approaches involving landscape-level
interventions and life-cycle emission accounting.
The evolving agricultural sector is key to
this cross-sectoral thinking. Where expanding
agriculture is a key driver of deforestation,
integrated landscape interventions are needed
to negotiate the trade-offs between the
sectors. The expansion of intensive, industrial
agriculture and contraction of traditional
agricultural practices as populations migrate
and become increasingly urbanised will
have profound impacts on the landscapes
Photo by Tri Saputro for CIFOR.
of the future and their carbon outcomes.
Research supports this by identifying the
different carbon trajectories of different forest–
agriculture scenarios.
This multi-sectoral, multi-level harmonisation
must be underpinned by research that clarifies
the trade-offs and synergies between actions.
CIFOR’s research on REDD+ already highlights
the frequent gaps between central and
subnational government levels, which are also
likely to occur with the implementation of NDCs.
Research on INDCs in Asia reveals that none of
the INDCs reviewed explicitly mention the role
of private sector deforestation and sustainability
commitments or the role of financial services in
reducing emissions. Forestry research such as
this offers essential insights and lessons for the
implementation of the Paris Agreement.
A FINAL THOUGHT
It is abundantly clear that forests and
landscapes offer an important part of the
solutions for the climate and development
agendas. But these solutions are almost
always local, small-scale and highly diverse.
The climate change debate is often held
at a global, intergovernmental level, far
from implementation on the ground. A very
real challenge is to create a movement
among hundreds of millions of small-scale
entrepreneurs to include climate actions in
their landscape businesses. Mega-scale policy
instruments may not always be the most
effective method for achieving the changes
we need.
Dr Peter Holmgren was appointed in 2012 as the
Director General of the Center for International
Forestry Research (CIFOR), where he leads a team
of more than 200 scientists and staff operating
together with partner institutions in over 40
countries. Under his leadership, CIFOR updated its
strategy in 2016, emphasising the role of forestry in
achieving each of the 17 Sustainable Development
Goals. Dr Holmgren has a PhD in Forestry and 26
years of experience in international forestry and
agriculture. Prior to CIFOR, Dr. Holmgren worked
at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO),
where he led FAO’s work on climate change and its
contributions to the UNFCCC process. While at FAO
he also coordinated the Global Forest Resources
Assessment, played a leading role in establishing
the UN-REDD programme, and led the development
of the Climate Smart Agriculture concept. An early
champion of the landscape approach, he launched
the Global Landscapes Forum, which is today the
world’s largest conference on integrated land use.
WATER & AGRICULTURE
A man marks a tree in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia, as part of a REDD project in the area.
Photo by Achmad Ibrahim for CIFOR.
The Center for International Forestry
Research (CIFOR, www.cifor.org) is a non-profit,
scientific facility that conducts research on
the most pressing challenges of forest and
landscape management around the world.
Using a global, multidisciplinary approach,
we aim to improve human well-being, protect
the environment, and increase equity. To do
so, we help policy-makers, practitioners and
communities make decisions based on solid
science about how they use and manage their
forests and landscapes.
www.climateactionprogramme.org 119