Gender and REDD+: An Assessment in the Oddar Meanchey Community Forestry REDD+ Site, Cambodia

 Amanda Bradley, Abidah B. Setyowati, Jeannette Gurung, Donal Yeang, Channa Net, Samnang Khiev and Julien Brewster

There are numerous reasons for turning this situation around and making concerted efforts to address gender concerns in REDD+ including adherence to an internationally recognized human rights approach, arguments of increased efficiency, efficacy and sustainability, as well as simple good business sense. A number of barriers and challenges exist including a male-dominated forestry sector, high labor burden for women, and poor understanding of relationships and nuanced power dynamics within communities.Within this context, the Forestry Administration, the international development NGO Pact, and several other partners have been developing the Oddar Meanchey Community Forestry REDD+ project in an effort to access sustainable financing for forest protection through the international voluntary carbon market. Using the Harvard Analytical Framework as a conceptual methodology, Pact initiated a gender assessment of the project in order to identify ways in which gender could be effectively mainstreamed during the project’s implementation phase. In order to collect data, in-depth interviews and focus group discussions were conducted in four of the 13 community forestry sites in the project area in April, 2012. The assessment team discovered a number of interesting findings related to participation; decision making and leadership; knowledge, skills and capacity; equitable benefit sharing; and resource access, use, and control. With regards to participation, men are taking a primary role in community forestry and REDD+ activities, while women are “partly involved” in almost all activities. Women participate less actively in meetings, trainings, forest patrolling, and forest assessment work due to a number of constraints such as lower membership on elected committees, lack of confidence in speaking, lower literacy levels, childcare and household duties, security issues, and a perceived lower level of knowledge.
 

Governing the design of national REDD +: An analysis of the power of agency

Maria Brockhaus, Monica Di Gregorio and Sofi Mardiah
Forest Policy and Economics

This paper investigates how three aspects of governance systems, namely the policy context, the influence of key agents and their discursive practices, are affecting national-level processes of policy design aimed at REDD +, reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries; and the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks in developing countries. We conducted analysis in six REDD + countries (Brazil, Cameroon, Indonesia, Nepal, Papua New Guinea and Vietnam). The paper combines three methods: policy analysis, media-based discourse analysis and policy network analysis. The paper shows that policies both within and outside the forestry sector that support deforestation and forest degradation create path dependencies and entrenched interests that hamper policy change. In addition, most dominant policy coalitions do not challenge business-as-usual trajectories, reinforcing existing policy and political structures. No minority policy coalitions are directly tackling the root causes of deforestation and forest degradation, that is, the politico-economic conditions driving them. Instead they focus on environmental justice issues, such as calls for increased participation of indigenous people in decision-making. Only in two of the six countries are these transformational change coalitions vocal enough to be heard, yet to exercise their agency effectively and to support more substantial reforms, these coalitions would need the participation of more influential policy actors, particularly state agencies that have the authority to make binding decisions about policy. Furthermore, discourses supporting transformational change would need to be reflected in institutional practices and policy decisions.

Self-sufficiency or surplus: Conflicting local and national rural development goals in Cambodia

Arnim Scheidel, Mario Giampietro and Jesús Ramos-Martin
 
Land Use Policy, Vol 34  (2013)
 
Cambodia is currently experiencing profound processes of rural change, driven by an emerging trend of large-scale land deals. This article discusses potential future pathways by analyzing two contrasting visions and realities of land use: the aim of the governmental elites to foster surplus-producing rural areas for overall economic growth, employment creation and ultimately poverty reduction, and the attempts of smallholders to maintain and create livelihoods based on largely self-sufficient rural systems. Based on the MuSIASEM approach, the rural economy of Cambodia and different rural system types are analyzed by looking at their metabolic pattern in terms of land use, human activity, and produced and consumed flows. The analysis shows that the pathways of self-sufficiency and surplus production are largely not compatible in the long term. Cambodia's rural labor force is expected to increase enormously over the next decades, while available land for the smallholder sector has become scarce due to the granting of Economic Land Concessions (ELC). Consequently, acceleration in rural–urban migration may be expected, accompanied by a transition from self-employed smallholders to employment-dependent laborers. If the ELC system achieves to turn the reserved land into viable agribusinesses, it might enable added value creation; however, it does not bring substantial amounts of employment opportunities to rural areas. On the contrary, ELC have high opportunity costs in terms of rural livelihoods based on smallholder land uses and thus drive the marginalization of Cambodian smallholders.
 

Orientation workshop on Social and Environmental Safeguards for REDD+ in Cambodia









From 04-05 April 2013, the Civil Society Organizations REDD+ Network in Cambodia (CSO REDD+ Network in Cambodia) organized an orientation workshop on "Social and Environmental Safeguards for REDD+” in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The purpose of the workshop is to share information and filed experiences/challenges to CSOs/NGOs on the concept of REDD+ safeguards including the role of Free, Prior, Inform and Consent (FPIC).The concepts and guidelines on Social and Environmental Safeguards in REDD+ from global to regional levels were presented and in addition, experiences and lesson learned on how safeguards have been applied  in REDD+ pilot project in Cambodia were also shared in the workshop. A group discuss on the perspectives on national safeguard guidelines development and capacity building need  as well as their further engagement in REDD+ program of CSOs/NGOs were also held.   


Workshop backdrop (Credited: CSOs REDD+ Network)

Workshop Materials: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/i9mf6v7c0ivk1sk/rIVVbg2Oms








Factors Affecting Forest Area Changes in Cambodia: An Econometric Approach

Tetsuya Michinaka, Motoe Miyamoto, Yasuhiro Yokota, Heng Sokh, Sethaphal Lao, Vuthy Ma


Clarifying factors affecting forest area changes is critical to implementing REDD+ scheme properly. We analyzed some socio-economic factors and clarified their relationships with deforestation in Cambodia for the period of 2002 to 2010. A panel data analysis was conducted for 18 provinces, while six other provinces were deleted from the list because only a small amount of their land was forested. Time effects, cross-sectional dependence, serial correlation in idiosyncratic errors, and heteroskedasticity were tested, and robust variance matrix estimations were obtained to solve the problems of heteroskedasticity and serial correlation. The model estimation results showed that population, gross agricultural production and large-scale plantation development have negative impacts on forest area changes. On the other hand, the impacts of rice cultivation, gross industrial production, household income and house floor area by household were found not to be significant. Overall, however, the results indicated that forests in Cambodia still face pressure from the increases in population, agriculture production, and the enlargement of land development. As the increase in productivity of agriculture gives a better use of current agricultural land and lessens the pressure on forest, intensifying agriculture is important. It is also important to develop industry and other economic ventures to grow national economy while not imposing pressure on forest. This research reminds decision makers to use discretion when developing large-scale plantations.

Cambodia’s REDD+ Pilot Projects Contribute to Settlement of Forest Disputes

Credit: www.un-redd.org
In January, the UN-REDD National Programme in Cambodia hosted a field mission and associated meetings, bringing together a wide range of stakeholders, to identify preliminary options on how to strengthen consensus building mechanisms for forest disputes, based on international best practices and observations at  the two REDD+ pilot project sites. Participants included international experts in conflict resolution and stakeholder engagement, community forest network members, civil society and indigenous peoples representatives, as well as representatives from the provincial and national governments.The field mission and associated meetings have resulted in the assessment of the types of drivers of deforestation and forest degradation likely to lead to conflicts, identification of potential consensus building mechanisms and ways to
strengthen them to prevent and resolve forest sector disputes/grievances; and a preliminary analysis of relationships among different state and non-state actors.  These results will be used as inputs in designing an effective consensus building and conflict resolution system for REDD+ in Cambodia.

Role of remote sensing and community forestry to manage forests for the effective implementation of REDD+ mechanism: a case study on Cambodia


In this study, we have shown the importance of remote sensing applications and community forestry for forest management, discussed as a case study on Cambodian forest management. Curbing deforestation is necessary for the effective implementation of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forests Degradation (REDD+) mechanism and management of forest resources to support sustainable forest management plans. The updated information of the forest cover and forest biomass using advanced remote sensing techniques can be useful for selecting the suitable sites for planned thinning, reforestation, community forestry, and concession land, which eventually will help in controlling the deforestation in Cambodia. To overcome the limitations of remote sensing, an integrated approach of remote sensing and community forestry to monitor forests from local to national level has also been discussed.


What are PES? A review of definitions and an extension

Sandra Derissen and Uwe Latacz-Lohmann
The term PES is often used to denote market incentives for the provision of public goods within the field of environmental and resource issues. In this context, PES translates into either ‘payments for environmental services’ or ‘payments for ecosystem services’—the terms that are not consistently defined in the literature and sometimes used as synonyms. Given the lack of coherent definitions, this note reviews current definitions of payments for ecosystem services and payments for environmental services entertained in the literature, discusses alternative meanings of environmental and ecosystem services in the PES context, and finally proposes a consistent definition. We argue that current definitions of PES found in the literature are insufficient to adequately describe the man-made nature of many environmental goods and services: that nature is ’produced’ through human intervention. Building upon the FAO's definition of environmental services, we propose a definition that regards environmental services as services provided through countryside management in a broader sense whilst produced either unintentionally or intentionally.
http://s3.amazonaws.com/mmc-beta-production/assets/7559/lakes_rivers.jpg
Credit: http://www.psmag.com/business-economics/mother-nature-s-sum-4226/

Local Community Engagement in an early stage of REDD+ project development: Lessons Learned from Siem Reap Community Forestry REDD+ project in Cambodia


Donal Yeang*, Samnang Khiev**, Channa Net**, Delux Chhun***, Julien Brewster** and Kirtiman Sherchan*
* Fauna & Flora International-Cambodia Programme, #19, Street 360, Phnom Penh, Cambodia 
** Pact Cambodia, Phnom Penh Center, Suite 300, Building A, Phnom Penh, Cambodia 
*** Forestry Administration, # 40, Preah Norodom Blvd., Phnom Penh, Cambodia 
Paper Presented at The Cambodian AgriNatura Research Workshop on:
Integrated Agriculture and Natural Resource Management for Sustainable Development
4 January 2013, Royal University of Agriculture, Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Reducing Emission from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD+) is a policy mechanism which aims to reduce carbon dioxide emission from developing countries through forest conservation, sustainable forest management and enhancement of forest carbon stocks. Even though the discussion on the precise design of the future REDD+ mechanism is still ongoing under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), REDD+ demonstration projects are being planned and implemented across the tropics, particularly in countries with high forest cover and high deforestation rates. Implementation challenges include measuring, reporting and verifying (MRV) forest area change, carbon stocks and the social and environmental impacts of REDD+ projects. Community based MRV can help to overcome some of these challenges. The author conducted interviews with local communities and key stakeholders in Siem Reap Community Forestry REDD+ project. The analysis was complemented by participant observation and a review of policy documents and secondary literature. The paper shows that local communities can help to measure forest carbon stock and gather social and environmental data for REDD+ project design and development. The local communities can only perform a basic measurement of biomass stock parameters in the sample plots such as circumference at breast height, standing and down deadwood, tree stump while the knowledge and skill of utilization of a Global Positioning System (GPS) and compass are still limited. The household survey to gather socioeconomic information regarding the use of natural resources of individual household could be conducted by the local community members who can read and write. In conclusion, engaging and empowering local communities in an early REDD+ project development could build a sense of trust and responsibility that local communities have towards the project. In addition, community based MRV could provide a rapid and cost-effective ways to gather relevant information for REDD+ project development.

Biomass Inventory in Bos Thom Community Forest

Community Tenure Rights and REDD: A Review of the Oddar Meanchey Community Forestry REDD Project in Cambodia

Donal Yeang  


ASEAS - Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies, 5(2), 263-274 


Tenure rights over land, forest, and carbon have become a contentious issue within REDD implementation across the tropics because local communities could be excluded from REDD benefits if land tenure or use and access rights are not clear. This study aims to understand and assess tenure arrangements under the fi rst REDD demonstration project in Cambodia, the Oddar Meanchey Community Forestry REDD Project. In particular, the study explores the following questions: (1) How are tenure rights arranged in the Oddar Meanchey REDD Project? (2) Does the tenure regime recognise the rights of local communities to their land and its associated resources? (3) What kind of institutions are put in place to support tenure rights of local communities in the project? The author conducted in-depth semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders and complemented the analysis by participant observation and a review of policy documents and secondary literature. The major finding of this study is that the local communities in the project are still given rights to use and access forest resources, although carbon rights belong to the government. While the government retains ownership over carbon credits, it agreed that at least 50 percent of the net revenue from the sale of carbon credits will flow to participating communities.

Download Full Paper: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2194259
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