{"id":28051,"date":"2009-06-02T05:59:00","date_gmt":"2009-06-02T05:59:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-09-28T10:42:42","modified_gmt":"2020-09-28T10:42:42","slug":"3051-no-trees-without-tenure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/en\/climate\/3051-no-trees-without-tenure\/","title":{"rendered":"No trees without tenure"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cNo trees without tenure\u201d may be a useful update to \u201cno timber without trees\u201d<\/a>: the rallying call of those who brought vital attention to rainforest sustainability in the 1980s. Resource tenure \u2013 the systems of rights, rules, institutions and processes regulating resource access and use \u2013 is crucial to shaping the distribution of risks, costs and benefits.<\/p>\n

While insecure tenure makes local people vulnerable to dispossession as land values increase, secure resource tenure gives them more leverage in relations with government and the private sector. Insecure or contested resource rights may also increase risk for investors; for example, reputational risk, in relation to possible tensions with local groups.<\/p>\n

There is now a vibrant international debate on REDD (\u201cReducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries\u201d), with spreading recognition that deforestation and forest degradation account for some 17% of greenhouse-gas emissions globally, and that the emission reductions needed to avoid catastrophic climate change are so large that they will not be achieved without reducing forest loss and degradation.<\/p>\n

Given the immediate challenge of negotiating a post-2012 agreement on climate change, much of the debate about REDD has focused on international aspects. But whether REDD will benefit \u2013 or marginalise \u2013 forest communities ultimately depends on local to national arrangements about the allocation of benefits within countries. So resource tenure is crucial.<\/p>\n

Yet tenure issues have only recently begun to receive attention in international debates \u2013 largely due to civil society pressure. Indeed, in terms of country submissions to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) by early 2009, only from one country \u2013 the tiny island nation of Tuvalu \u2013 had there been a proposal to make community-managed forests or indigenous peoples\u2019 rights a binding part of a REDD agreement.<\/p>\n

REDD was hotly debated at the UN-led international climate-change talks (COP14) in Poznan, Poland in December 2008, but with few concrete results. The Indigenous Peoples\u2019 Caucus on Climate Change joined forces with various NGOs in an effort to generate agreement among parties on the need to recognise the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities in any future REDD regime, including human rights instruments such as the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), and procedural rights such as the right to Free Prior Informed Consent (FPIC). But the final statement of the COP was weak in this regard, recognising only \u201c…the need to promote the full and effective participation of indigenous and local communities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Our report, Tenure in REDD: start-point or afterthought?<\/i>, aims to take the debate forward by identifying: a typology of tenure regimes in rainforest countries and some of the challenges they present for REDD; the nature of tenure and usage rights regimes within key rainforest countries; and the issues revealed by exploration of these regimes that will need to be engaged with if REDD and related strategies are to have sustainable impact. Seven rainforest countries \u2013 examples of those likely to be major players within a REDD system \u2013 are the foci of attention: Brazil, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Guyana, Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea.<\/p>\n

Overall, the rainforest countries reviewed here present great diversity of tenure contexts, and different mixes of strengths and weaknesses when possible arrangements for REDD are considered. The following table is purely illustrative:
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