Yam Malla, RECOFTC Executive Director (closing remarks)

Ms Pham Minh Thoa, Deputy Director General, Vietnam’s Forest Department

Representatives of FAO, Norad and the various other organizations supporting this forum

Ladies and gentlemen,

We are now almost at the end of the 3rd day of this Forum on carbon financing and community forestry. I personally thoroughly enjoyed listening to the various presentations and panel discussions. I was impressed by the quality and richness of the questions that were raised to the presenters and panels. I hope you have also found the forum to be as interesting and as useful, if not more.

I personally feel that the forum was a success in terms of meeting its objectives and taking us a step towards developing a greater understanding of carbon financing and ways of making it work for people and forests. There are still a lot of unknowns about forest carbon financing, including how it could help take further the cause of community-based forest management. We cannot expect to find all the answers in such a short time. I do however believe that this forum was able to help address and clarify some of the more important questions. But it is up to you all, rather than just me, to judge to what extent the forum was useful and relevant for your work.

A few important points I will be taking home with me:

Deforestation will not be halted if local people do not have the correct incentives to support mitigation efforts through REDD.
To work, these schemes must maximize opportunities for local people; address the constraints to their participation, and minimize the risks.
Fair, secure land and tenure rights are critical to local engagement.

If these principles are taken fully on board we have a historic opportunity to protect our environment, but at the same time we must use this opportunity to address the critical drivers of rural poverty.

I was also delighted to hear that grassroots institutions “matter.” Helping to build capacity of local grassroots stakeholders is exactly where RECOFTC; thanks to support from Norad, Sida, and others; will be putting much effort in the coming months.

One of the first things we will do is take the learning and messages from this Forum and turn it into immediate action, according to the plan we have just agreed. I know that all of you will do the same.

With that I would like to end my speech and hand over to Patrick Durst.

Thank you.