| Danial Norjidi |
FORESTS and forestry can contribute to all aspects of sustainable development, including poverty, food, security and health.
This was one of the points put forward by Dr Peter Holmgren, Director General for the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) while delivering a keynote address at the Asia-Pacific Rainforest Summit 2016, which was recently held in Brunei Darussalam.
“We are at a critical turning when political commitments on sustainable development and climate change need to be transformed into real-world actions,” he said.
He said that the key word of the Summit was ‘integration’.
“First, we aspire to forest and landscape management that integrate our economic, environment and social aspirations.
“Secondly, the Summit is a conscious effort for integrating public, private and people actors in achieving real impact. When we join forces between these three ‘Ps’ (and we can also call them politics, profit and participation), we have a real chance to make a difference that counts on the ground and benefits everyone.
“Thirdly, we seek to integrate forest and forestry issues into the mainstream of sustainable development,” he continued.
Dr Peter Holmgren, Director General of the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), during his keynote address at the recent Asia-Pacific Rainforest Summit 2016. – BAHYIAH BAKIR
“The new SDG framework is the tool and provides the language to make this happen. There is a tendency in peoples’ minds to park forests and forestry in the environment corner in the development debate.”
He highlighted the importance of forests and forestry to all aspects of sustainable development, and said, “It will take courage and determination from all of us to change the narrative on forests and forestry to raise the awareness of their true value.”
He noted that earlier this year he released CIFOR’s new strategy for next ten years. The strategy, he said, is a product of a wold-wide consultation with stakeholders. “Not surprisingly, we have come to similar conclusions.”
These include the need to broadly integrate forestry into the new climate and development agenda, as well as that, rather than developing an isolated forestry agenda, there is a need to build on the Agenda 2030 for sustainable development and on the Paris Agreement (or for sustainable development and climate).
Another conclusion was that the concept of “forestry” needs to be redefined, both the expert community and more importantly everybody else out there.
“This led us to define CIFOR’s mission around the full set of 17 SDGs (sustainable development goals),” he said. “We should include all of them.”
This, he said, is because “forestry must contribute to all aspects of sustainable development – poverty, food security, health, energy, water, climate change, rights, economic growth, life on land and life under water.”
“So let us therefore redefine ‘forestry’ as all contributions to sustainable development made possible through forests and trees.”
He said that focus on value-chains, finance and investments and how they can co-exist with sustainable low-carbon development is crucial, “especially in this region that drives a large part of the global economy, and at the same time faces serious environmental challenges.
“Addressing this requires us to look beyond and issues per se, and also focus on the other classical economic parameters: labour, capital and innovation.”
He mentioned two specific challenges.
“The first lies in achieving more sustainable value chains, which secure commodity supply, contribute to low-carbon rural development and maintain ecosystem services provision.
“The second is ensuring that smallholders and small- and medium-scale enterprises are able to successfully compete in and benefit from their integration in global value chains under higher environmental standards.
“New commitments from the private sector are encouraging and we see a host of both challenges and opportunities here,” he added.
Dr Holmgren went on to highlight that “integration” also pertains to integration across economic sectors.
“We will not realise the full potential of forests and forestry in sustainable development unless we work across traditional institutional boundaries.
“We shouldn’t continue to nurture a separate forest and forestry agenda,” he continued. “Instead we must genuinely work together with our colleagues in agriculture, energy, water, finance, infrastructure, trade, tourism, education and so on.
“The common denominator that brings us together is landscapes,” he asserted. “Landscapes with a wide diversity in shapes and sizes will be a cornerstone for the future we want.
Multifunctional landscapes provide homes and livelihoods for 450 million people in the Asia-Pacific region, he noted.
“Bringing together people and expectations to find good solutions in landscapes is therefore to me the best investment we can make for future generations.”
The post Forestry’s role in sustainable development appeared first on Borneo Bulletin Online.