First Regional Forum for People and Forests

Carbon Financing and Community Forestry

18-20 August - Hanoi

2009 is a crucial year for global efforts to address climate change with the hope that an ambitious and effective mitigation and adaptation agreement will be forged at the United Nation's Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen this December.

Deforestation and forest degradation contribute some 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Forest-related mitigation measures are now recognized to be amongst the most practical and cost-effective measures to slow global warming.

However, rural poverty, weak law enforcement, and escalating demand for food and fuel continue to drive forest destruction at an alarming rate - in the Asia-Pacific region alone, some 3.7 million hectares of natural forest are lost every year. This also threatens millions of already vulnerable rural livelihoods, often undermining local rights and access to forest resources.

Carbon financing may provide promising new opportunities for achieving the health of the world's forests and, if designed well, reducing rural poverty. But if schemes such as ‘REDD' do not engage Asia-Pacific's 450 million forest dependent people and deliver them tangible benefits, then the social and economic impacts could be severe. Ultimately it increases the risk that forest-related mitigation efforts will fail.

Key country decision-makers and over 80 participants from 12 Asia-Pacific nations gathered  to consider these issues at the First Regional Forum for People and Forests in Hanoi, Vietnam, from 18-20 August.