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(APEC)History is in the making. Ministers Responsible for Forestry from the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum’s 21 member economies met for the first time in Beijing on Sept. 6-8, 2011. China’s President Hu Jintao opened the event in the Great Hall of the People signaling high level support for cooperation on forestry in the Asia-Pacific economic region. As an APEC member economy, Indonesia’s delegation to the Ministerial meeting was represented by high ranking officials from the Forestry Ministry.
APEC economies have made great progress toward meeting the 2020 aspirational goal of increasing forest cover in the region by at least 20 million hectares of all types of forests, as stated in the 2007 APEC Leaders’ Sydney Declaration. Much of this increase however, has been due to rapid expansion of plantations, with the quantity and quality of natural forests still on the decline in many countries.
These natural forests will continue to be degraded and converted to other uses undermining social, economic, environmental and climate change objectives, unless the financial and political incentives which drive land management decisions are radically changed.
Thankfully, there are opportunities on the horizon which APEC economies can take advantage of to re-align the incentives governing forest management and enact low carbon development strategies that include the forest sector.
Growing awareness of the origin of timber products and the conditions under which forests are managed are creating calls for changing policies and management practices across the global timber supply chain, both domestic side (illegal logging abatement) and demand side (good procurement). The 2008 Amendments to the Lacey Act in the United States, Indonesia’s Timber Legality Assurance System (TLAS) and Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) with the European Union, and preliminary work in China to develop a Timber Legality Verification System are just some examples of APEC member economies making policy decisions designed to exclude illegally harvested timber from the global supply chain that businesses must now respond to in order to stay competitive.
Given this dynamic between public policy and private practice, APEC economies should take additional steps. First, responsible sourcing practices to exclude illegally harvested timber from supply chains must be developed where they do not already exist. Second, public procurement policies should be adopted, requiring that all purchases of forest products after 2015 have their legal origin verified, and all purchases after 2020 are credibly certified as meeting internationally recognized standards of good forest management. Finally, public-private partnerships must be promoted to help the sector adapt to changing global norms and remain competitive in an increasingly globalized economy and to spur investment in progressive companies.
These sorts of initiatives will create a performance-based culture for forest management. This will be essential as the forest sector seeks to broaden its income base.
While prospects for the upcoming United Nations climate change negotiations in Durban, South Africa are uncertain, APEC member economies have the ability to help break the looming impasse and set the stage for more substantial negotiations in the future.
Currently, the positions of countries diverge considerably and the actions being contemplated are simply inadequate to meet either the very real threat of climate change or to re-align the incentives that currently lead to forest loss and degradation in so many countries.
To address this challenge, some actions should be taken. Cancun agreements must be implemented without delay, both through domestic actions, and through bilateral and multilateral implementation mechanisms. Copenhagen emissions reduction pledges should be re-examined and strengthened appropriately — especially those made by developed countries — as the scientific evidence of climate change continues to grow stronger.
Implementation frameworks to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) should be operationalized at national and international levels, both to allow developed countries to strengthen their reduction commitments and to create meaningful economic incentives for sustainable forest management and carbon stock enhancement in developing countries. Lastly, a consistent international framework for transparent forest carbon measuring, reporting and verification (MRV) must be developed and deployed.
These actions, if undertaken within the framework of the United Nations process, could catalyze the development of demand for CO2 emissions reductions and carbon stock enhancements necessary to ensure the sustainability of forest management with the APEC region.
These two opportunities — consolidating efforts to exclude illegally harvested timber from supply chains and creating strong financial incentives for sustainable forest management — are examples of the bold and decisive moves that APEC economies could and should promote in order to create the incentives necessary to achieve the 2020 aspirational goal for forests.
Such moves might enable APEC economies to achieve an even greater goal — not only to expand forest cover by 20 million hectares by 2020 but also to improve forest ecosystem quality, help forests to mitigate and adapt to climate change and ensure that forests can continue to help meet the changing development needs of the Asia-Pacific economic region.
The result would position the forest sector as a foundational element in the emerging Green Economy in APEC, sustaining economic growth and livelihood opportunities in the 21st century.
Bill Ginn is chief conservation officer at The Nature Conservancy in Washington, DC. Wahjudi Wardojo is senior advisor on international forest carbon policy for The Nature Conservancy in Indonesia.
source: thejakartapost.com
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