FAO Journal on UN Guidelines on Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s Land Tenure Journal’s latest edition examines the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security. The Guidelines, which were recently endorsed by the Committee on World Food Security, are still widely unknown and the four articles in the peer-reviewed, open-access journal seek to explain their contents, their development and the strategies for implementing them. 

The journal articles can be downloaded here. Find other related news via the Traditional Knowledge Bulletin here.

Video Repository on Forest Commodification

Forests are facing immense challenges from the increased commodification of their resources. Some incoming policies may worsen these challenges dramatically. To highlight the lived experiences of communities affected by forest commodification, the Global Forest Coalition has launched a repository of videos gathered from a variety of organisations and contexts. The repository has been launched as government representatives gather for the 18th Conference of Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change to highlight the results of commodification and the dangers of policies that ignore or intensify commodification processes. The repository organises the videos into three key thematic areas: exporting commodities; carbon: schemes, scams & cowboys; and rights and resistance.

The repository can be accessed here.

E-Module on REDD+ for Communities

Human activities are consuming huge amounts of fossil fuels and raw materials that are creating massive amounts of persistent gases that are dramatically changing weather patterns in unpredictable ways. Deforestation contributes an estimated 18-25% of carbon emissions. The idea behind the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD+) programme is to generate funds to reduce emissions through forest conservation in order to slow the onset of climate change. Since most of the world’s remaining forests are in the ‘developing world’ and most of the world’s emissions are from the ‘developed world’, the majority of funding for REDD+ will be directed from the latter to the former. As REDD+ is implemented, communities will be significantly impacted, often negatively. 

In this context, Natural Justice has prepared a draft e-module on REDD+ for communities. The module seeks to prepare communities, especially communities developing biocultural community protocols, to engage proactively with the international framework of REDD+. It briefly describes the rationale behind and plans for REDD+. It then looks at the key issues that have emerged around REDD+, focusing especially on the concerns with its current status and the safeguards that are being developed to attempt to protect community rights. It closes by looking at the current forms in which REDD+ is being implemented. 

The full e-module can be downloaded here. Other e-modules drafted by Natural Justice can be accessed here. These modules supplement ‘BCPs: A Toolkit for Community Facilitators’, which can be viewed here. The documents are not final and any comments can be directed to Holly Shrumm (holly (at) naturaljustice.org) and Harry Jonas (harry (at) naturaljustice.org).

Chatham House Illegal Logging Stakeholders Update

Peter Wood, speaking on behalf of Global Witness, gave a presentation on 21 January 2010 at the Chatham House Illegal Logging Stakeholders Update in London, on “Moving SFM from Exploitation to Restoration Within a Finite Forest.” Wood described the need to rapidly transition away from the industrial model of tropical forestry, based on large-scale logging of intact natural forests, towards community based management that prioritizes the restoration of degraded land. He also challenged the concession-based model of forestry that currently dominates the Congo Basin, noting that relying on logging companies to provide basic health care and education services can undermine a community’s ability to challenge unsustainable rates of harvest.
The presentation can be downloaded here.

Bio-cultural Community Protocols in India

Kabir Bavikatte and Harry Jonas worked with two communities in India to develop bio-cultural community protocols in mid August. We worked with traditional healers in the Valli region of Rajasthan and with the Malayali Tribes in Tamil Nadu and their support organizations (Jagran Jan Vikas Samiti and the Foundation for Revitalization of Local HealthTraditions) to set out the natural resource base and bio-cultural foundations of their traditional knowledge. We developed protocols for each group to assist them and their support organizations to securetheir rights to access forest resources and to ensure that any use of their knowledge is in accordance with their bio-cultural values. The protocols are available on the website.