Suvas Devkota and Sandesh Silpakar

Asia Dialogue on Community Forests and Property Rights in the Context of Climate Change was successfully carried out on August 11-12, 2010 in, Kathmandu, Nepal. More than 70 participant's representatives from 10 countries of ASIA including Nepal were participated and contributed to the discourse. Numbers of issues related on community forests, property rights and cldimate change were discussed during the dialogue. The whole dialogue process was confined Reducing Emission from Deforestation and Degradation-REDD and totally excluded adoption role of community forests in the climate change context.

It is known that rights of the community / Forest dependent community and Indigenous People (IP) through community forestry are advancing throughout the region in some extend. These countries have developed policies and legislations in place for advancing community forestry. Although the progress made is not to the desired extent but community forestry area is increasing, ownership right of communities is increasing and government is slowly and gradually trying to realize that if forest resource has to be restored and deforestation has to be reversed, then there is no other way than empowering the local community and handing over the responsibility to local community to govern the forest resources.

Lessons could be learnt from Australia, China, and Vietnam and to some extent Nepal on how tenure reform is directly related to forest degradations conditions. An example of Phillippines points that more the community based forest management, lesser is the degradation. However, more studies need to be done in this aspect. 

The key minimum reform that should be done is to clarify a balanced role, responsibility and authority among the state, civil society and community. Tenure reform is not adequate, there should be tenure transformation. The transformation of tenure meaning the shift, the handover of ownership rights from state to community, so that the tenure rights to intervene to the resources are secure. 

Drivers of deforestation: Some are related to forest, others are related to agriculture and there are many important driving forces that are related to political governance system particularly corruption, illegal logging, unclear tenure and colonial history meaning still the control and command system. 

Important questions on discussion: What does REDD offer more than what we have now? What actually we lose if we adapt REDD? What we gain out of REDD plus or what we lose if we adopt it? 

If REDD++ readiness mechanism is done unilaterally by state without equal partnership with CSO and communities, then it is likely that REDD plus will fail before it goes for the compliance stage. 

If that does not happen then people will see REDD as a new form of colonialization, recentralization and another form of failure of state and market. Therefore participation of CSO and community as equal partners not just as token of partnership should be there. 

Alternative definition of REDD means rights over resources, equity, devolution of power, democracy and development. REDD should follow governance and equity. 

The compliance of just 1% of the total promise of $100 billion does not guarantee the implementation of REDD that goes in favor of communities. Psychology of Market saying that the rate of carbon credit might go by half. Therefore who benefits, who buys the carbon; that loses, the communities.

One common voice is needed. During this time of readiness, we should not worry just about financial mechanisms but we should also  make sure that the information mechanism and the other institutional mechanism are in place and we learn ourselves at national and sub national level by doing some innovative project. 

Conclusion:

 Is carbon just added value or there will be more conditions that will be imposed upon the communities? If the conditions are not acceptable and if the condition restricts the current access to forest for livelihood, then carbon would not be an added value, carbon would in turn restrict the users to access forest. Therefore, it should be very clear on this whether an added value is or not.  From our experience from Asia, can we say that community forest be considered as important vehicle for REDD. If it is not, if people see different alternatives than CF, then there is very little prospect for REDD.

Only by securing community/IPs rights that forest would be managed wisely. State has to play an enabling role and communities will prove to be better managers of forests. REDD has both opportunities and challenges. fear that REDD will bring recentralization, fear that money will drive the policy rather policy driving the money, fear that the community rights and the human rights get compromised.