Tropical forest ecosystems represent a common heritage with livelihood portfolios shared by a great majority of people especially in developing countries but are now threatened by climate change. In spite of their contribution to poverty alleviation and food security, and also for climate change responses (adaptation and mitigation especially through the market-incentive schemes (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol) forests are still hardly integrated into national planning processes aimed at addressing any of these national development challenges. This is evident in some of the national documents of some developing countries such as the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) to the World Bank, and the First National Communication to UNFCCC. This paper presents some preliminary outcomes of the Tropical Forests and Climate Change Adaptation (TroFCCA) project of the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) whose overall mission is to underscore the importance of tropical forests for livelihood adaptation to climate change and mainstreaming adaptation into national development processes. The paper also highlights TroFCCA’s approach in engaging stakeholders from the onset in setting the agenda with the identification and prioritization of forest-based sectors as the entry point in the process of assessing the vulnerability to climate change and developing adaptation strategies for these selected development sectors. This is a highly crucial area with great policy implications. Planning with ecosystem goods and services seems to emerge as a prospective approach to demonstrate to policymakers the potential of forest ecosystems for livelihood adaptation to climate change which also enhances the opportunity for achieving food security and community resilience to poverty. TroFCCA’s approach in engaging stakeholders at the onset in defining their perception of ecosystem goods and services by virtue of their importance to household livelihoods and their contribution to national development emphasizes the significance of a place-based context in the valuation of ecosystem goods and services. This approach also contributes to raising public and policy awareness to climate change as part of the continuum of mainstreaming climate change adaptation into national development planning. The study also highlights the opportunities that an ecosystem approach provides for integrated natural resource planning for achieving co-benefits linked to the realization of two (1 and 7) important Millennium Development Goals. However, there are other policy and institutional reform challenges including governance, equity and rights to resources that need to be addressed in order to reap the full suite of benefits for climate change adaptation, poverty reduction and food security.
Tag: Adaptation
Agroforestri sebagai solusi mitigasi dan adaptasi pemanasan global: pengelolaan sumber daya alam yang berkelanjutan dan fleksibel terhadap berbagai perubahan
Pemanasan global merupakan gejala dari adanya pengelolaan sumber daya alam (SDA) yang tidak berkelanjutan. Pemanasan global juga menyebabkan munculnya kekhawatiran dunia, karena dampaknya terhadap kehidupan dan kondisi bentang lahan dari semua Negara baik bagi negara penghasil (emisi) gas rumah kaca (GRK) maupun bukan. Indonesia merupakan salah satu negara emitor GRK terutama berasal dari pembakaran hutan dan pengeringan gambut, sehingga Indonesia menjadi salah satu bagian dari solusi pengurangan pemanasan global. Secara umum tapak ekologi (ecological footprint) dunia telah melebihi ruang yang tersedia, maka penggunaan ruang harus seefisien mungkin. Penggunaan ruang harus multifungsional yang dapat menghasilkan kebutuhan pokok dan sekaligus memberikan layanan lingkungan yang dibutuhkan masyarakat dan kehidupan lainnya. Agroforestri merupakan tawaran yang dapat memberikan solusi multifungsional, walaupun didalam sistemnya masih dijumpai pula hal-hal yang saling bertentangan (trade-off) dan kompromi internal. Tradeoff dapat ditangani asalkan perolehan produksi dan layanan lingkungan memperoleh imbal jasa (reward) yang adil dan benar.
The application of participatory action research to climate change adaptation in Africa: a reference guide
L’application de la recherche-action participative à l’adaptation aux changements climatiques en Afrique.: manuel de référence
Supporting local adaptive capacity to climate change in the Congo basin forest of Cameroon: a participatory action research approach
This paper aims at assessing the vulnerability of local communities in the Congo basin forests of Cameroon; to help them identify their specific needs for adaptation, and to facilitate knowledge sharing with the aim of enhancing adaptive capacity. Using participatory-action research approach, research was carried out in two project sites in Nkol-evodo and in Yokadouma in the Center and South-East Regions of Cameroon, respectively. The authors shared participatory-research (PAR) steps and processes to assist other researchers and local stakeholders to jointly assess, monitor and adapt to climatic and other changes. This study shows that the adverse effects of climate conditions to which study communities are exposed are already being felt and exerting considerable stress on most of the important activities to their livelihoods such as agriculture and exploitation of national resources. PAR tools and processes led to participatory diagnosis, conceptualizing of change, participatory identification, prioritization and implementation of specific strategies for climate change adaptation in the study sites. However, further studies are needed to investigate the effectiveness of these strategies. The PAR experiences show that stakeholders’ involvement throughout the project needs to be considered by researchers who wish to enhance the adaptive capacity of the communities they work with. This paper contributes to the description of the process for enhancing adaptive capacity of forest living communities. Findings in this research may provide a crucial foundation for community-based adaptation measures and complement broader-scale scientific research with local precision.
A role-playing game as a tool to facilitate social learning and collective action towards Climate Smart Agriculture: Lessons learned from Apuí, Brazil
Addressing the global challenges of climate change (CC), food security and poverty alleviation requires enhancing the adaptive capacity and mitigation potential of land use systems. To this end, Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) aims to identify land use practices that sustainably increase productivity, enhance climate change (CC) adaptation and contribute to CC mitigation. A transition towards CSA requires technical, but also socio-institutional changes, for improved smallholder agricultural systems. Such changes may be triggered by stakeholder participation processes that stimulate social learning and collective action. This article evaluates whether a role-playing game (RPG) is an effective participatory tool to encourage social learning and collective action among local stakeholders towards adoption of CSA strategies. We designed and implemented an RPG with three groups of farmers in Apuí (Southern Amazonas), evaluating the game’s impact on social learning by interviewing each farmer before and after the RPG. Our findings show that the RPG induced not only technical learning, but also socio-institutional learning and engagement for collective action, though outcomes varied between different RPG sessions and among farmer participants.