The establishment of the Bill is a significant achievement for the country. Prior to the signing of the Rice Council Bill, a major challenge for Nigerian rice producers was the lack of investment, particularly foreign investment. Given that there was no security for investors, countries like Ghana received the majority of the investment as a result of their Rice Council Bill which ensured a level of security for foreign investments. Part of the responsibility, therefore, of the Nigerian Rice Council is to encourage buying local, by placing a high tax on the importation of rice and/or ban the import of rice. Several groups in Nigeria came together and advocated for the establishment of the Rice Council Bill. After passing the first reading, the Senate stopped it. The RFS Nigeria project then put together key thoughts and advantages of the Rice Council and forwarded them to the Chairman of the Agriculture Committee of the Senate. The Chairman agreed that the evidence was convincing enough for the Bill to be passed. This is a significant policy achievement for the country.
Tag: investment
Towards an effective, practical and equitable forest carbon legal framework in Vietnam: Recommendations and proposals for the Draft Decree on Forest Carbon Sequestration and Storage Services, based on a synthesis of global and Vietnamese experiences and practices
This report analyses the provisions proposed in the Draft Decree on Forest Carbon Sequestration and Storage Services (‘the Draft Decree’) and provides relevant information as well as scientific evidence in both the global and Vietnamese contexts. The aim is to help policymakers make informed adjustments that align with Vietnam’s specific circumstances while positioning the country to proactively respond to emerging trends in the future carbon market.
Employment in industrial timber plantations: An Ethiopian case supported by a global review
Highlights
- Global experience of employment generation in timber plantations shows contrasting outcomes including in terms of rural development, but there are also commonalities such as poor working conditions, seasonality of employment and relatively low labor intensity over large areas compared to other land uses.
- Ethiopia conforms to this pattern, based on a case study of an industrial timber plantation, with low wages and reliance on casual jobs without formal contracts in a rural context of a weak labor market with few employment opportunities.
- Gender wise, the opportunities are uneven with a large majority of positions filled by men resulting in a marginal involvement of women, and a great potential for improvements in this field.
- Employees with agricultural land (a minority) appreciate the provision of additional sources of incomes, and the flexibility in work arrangement that allows them to simultaneously engage in agricultural activities. However, we also notice that daily labor as the main model of employment has serious implications with respect to social security and various benefits that would be associated to labor contracts.
- As the Government of Ethiopia is committed to promote afforestation and reforestation on 7 million hectares (ha) in view of making the country self-sufficient in wood, enhancing carbon sequestration and supporting green growth, these lessons would be usefully applied in the future. There are indeed great expectations that timber plantations and processing units will create significant rural and urban employment opportunities.
Integrating adaptation into REDD+: potential impacts and social return on investment in Sogod, Southern Leyte, Philippines
REDD+ interventions can help both people and forests adapt to climate change by conserving or enhancing biodiversity and forest ecosystem services. However, additional adaptation measures might be needed, such as the protection of agriculture and livelihoods and the development of fire management strategies. Such measures could support the sustainability of REDD+ interventions and the permanence of carbon stocks by preventing activity displacement and induced deforestation and by limiting or avoiding damage to the ecosystem from extreme weather events. To design community-based adaptation interventions and assess their potential outcomes within the Southern Leyte Province REDD+ project area in the Philippines, representatives from seven upland Barangays (villages) of Sogod Municipality were involved in a bottom-up, stakeholder-focused process. A social return on investment framework was applied. Community members discussed climate and non-climate challenges and the effectiveness of their current coping strategies. Adaptation interventions were then conceived and planned, using future visioning exercises. Two interventions were prioritized: securing land tenure and developing abaca agroforestry (Musa textilis inter-planted with different fruit trees). Challenges and adaptation interventions were also discussed with stakeholders from relevant local- and regionallevel organizations (e.g. provincial and municipal government agencies) during a participatory workshop. Projected future climate scenarios, the sensitivity of key resources and adaptive capacity were also discussed. This resulted in a holistic understanding of the costs, benefits, opportunities and challenges associated with implementing the selected adaptation strategies not only in the target area, but also in the province more broadly. The Southern Leyte Province REDD+ project is implemented by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH and the Philippine Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) in collaboration with local government units and local communities under the Project ‘Climate-relevant Modernization of Forest Policy and Piloting of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) in the Philippines’, funded by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU) under its International Climate Initiative. This study was conducted by CIFOR in collaboration with GIZ with a grant from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).
Integrating adaptation into REDD+: potential impacts and social return on investment in Setulang, Malinau District, Indonesia
REDD+ interventions can help both people and forests adapt to climate change by conserving or enhancing biodiversity and forest ecosystem services. However, additional adaptation measures might be needed, such as the protection of agriculture and livelihoods and the development of fire management strategies. Such measures could support the sustainability of REDD+ interventions and the permanence of carbon stocks by preventing activity displacement and induced deforestation and by limiting or avoiding damage to the ecosystem from extreme weather events. To design community-based adaptation interventions and assess their potential outcomes within the Community Forest (Hutan Desa) REDD+ project area in Setulang Village, Malinau District, Kalimantan,village representatives were involved in a bottom-up, stakeholder-focused process. A social return on investment framework was applied. Community members discussed climate and non-climate challenges and the effectiveness of their current coping strategies. Adaptation interventions were then conceived and planned, using future visioning exercises. Two interventions were prioritized: development of rattan handicraft enterprises and rubber agroforestry. Challenges and adaptation interventions were also discussed with stakeholders from relevant district organizations (e.g. local government agencies) through individual semi-structured interviews. Projected future climate scenarios, the sensitivity of key resources and adaptive capacity were also discussed. This resulted in a holistic understanding of the costs, benefits, opportunities and challenges associated with implementing the selected adaptation strategies not only in the target area, but also in the district more broadly. The Community Forest (Hutan Desa) project in Setulang, Malinau, is facilitated by the FORCLIME programme of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH. This study was conducted by CIFOR in collaboration with the GIZ, with a grant from the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) Germany.
Improving smaller holder farmers access to Information to enhanced decision making in natural resource management: experiences from Southwestern Uganda
Land tenure security and agricultural performance in Africa: overview of research methodology
There is a widespread belief among development specialists that tenure security is an important condition for economic development. Compared with weak or insufficient property rights, secure rights based on economic theory are believed to (1) increase credit use through greater incentives for investment, improved creditworthiness of projects, and enhanced collateral value of land; (2) increase land transactions, facilitating transfers of land from less efficient to more efficient uses by increasing the certainty of contracts and lowering enforcement costs; (3) reduce the incidence of land disputes through clearer definition and enforcement of rights; and (4) raise productivity through increased agricultural investment (Feder et al. 1988, Barrows and Roth 1990). Whether greater security of land rights under indigenous or state tenures has a positive payoff through these linkages is a crucial empirical issue in the economics of land policyand tenure conversion.
Analyzing the investment effects of forest rights devolution in Nepal’s community-managed forest enterprises
Forest rights devolution in Nepal from the late 1980s created different types of community-based forest management institutions, in particular community forestry user groups. Effective forest regeneration led to a new focus on entrepreneurial opportunities for improving livelihoods and social equity, resulting in considerable if unstable enterprise growth. Employing the concept of enabling and asset investments, the study examines how user groups have established and managed forest-based enterprises, taking account of regulatory and non-regulatory factors. The study is based on primary data from interviews with 12 community-managed forest enterprises as well as secondary data from the published, government and grey literature. In light of the high export demand for non-timber forest products from India and elsewhere, there has been gradual policy support for enterprise development from the government. Enabling investments by the government, donors and non-governmental organizations have built momentum and contributed to success. Forest-based enterprises have the potential to change the face of Nepal’s rural economy. However, complex and poorly harmonized regulatory requirements have kept many community-managed forest enterprises in a state of informality and unable to attract asset investment. An emerging second generation of community-managed forest enterprises can benefit from reductions in regulatory burdens and attract asset investments capable of overcoming current obstacles to growth.
Assessing conditions to scale up private investment in forest restoration
Forest restoration (FR) in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) requires private investment. We estimated the area of degraded forestland with investment conditions favoring private FR in 115 LMICs. We examined a base scenario, with FR driven by wood markets and influenced by seven investment conditions, and a “natural climate solutions” (NCS) scenario, with FR driven by carbon markets and influenced by six conditions. We have found that barely half of the restorable area in the base scenario, and barely a third in the NCS scenario, has at least four favorable investment conditions (i.e., at least half of the total number). In both scenarios, less than 1% of the restorable area has all conditions favorable. Locations with more favorable conditions tend to have greater potential to generate local livelihood benefits than global carbon or biodiversity benefits. Of the 59 LMICs that have made national commitments to restore forestland under the Bonn Challenge, which has a global goal to restore 350 million hectares by 2030, more than half have made a commitment whose area exceeds our estimate of the country’s restorable area with at least four favorable investment conditions. This discrepancy implies that those countries cannot rely solely on private investment to achieve their commitments. Scaling up private FR in LMICs requires coordinated public-sector investments and policy interventions to improve investment conditions and ensure that private FR generates both local and global environmental benefits.
Evaluación de los impactos de REDD+ desde una perspectiva local: Reflexiones sobre el bienestar en la Amazonía peruana
Mensajes clave
- Al ser uno de los principales países que lideran los esfuerzos para reducir las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero (GEI) asociadas con el cambio del uso del suelo, Perú ha establecido un marco regulatorio para la compensación por la reducción de emisiones a través de los mercados de carbono.
- La compensación de emisiones mediante mecanismos como REDD+ tiene el potencial de generar diversos impactos en las comunidades forestales que participan en estos proyectos, que pueden abarcar aspectos económicos, sociales y de bienestar.
- Para evaluar las implicaciones de REDD+ en el bienestar local, es fundamental entender, en primer lugar, cómo perciben las comunidades locales el concepto de bienestar y los efectos de REDD+ sobre el bienestar local.
- Observamos que, en dos sitios REDD+ de la Amazonía peruana, existe consenso en que el acceso a la educación y el acceso a los servicios de salud son dimensiones fundamentales del bienestar local. La importancia de otras dimensiones de bienestar varía entre los dos sitios, siendo las diferencias socioculturales (comunidades rurales frente a comunidades indígenas) más marcadas que las de género.
- Nuestros hallazgos indican que REDD+ no tuvo un impacto consistente en las dimensiones de bienestar identificadas a nivel local. Sin embargo, se observó un impacto negativo en uno de los dos sitios de estudio, posiblemente atribuido a las percepciones sobre falta de transparencia y al incumplimiento de las expectativas sobre los beneficios prometidos.