Engage forest groups, conference told
Stevie Emilia, The Jakarta Post, Poznan, Poland | Sat, 12/06/2008 8:33 AM
For forest communities, adapting to climate change is a matter of life or death, but this aspect of the global issue tends to be neglected, experts say.
“For many forest communities, adapting to climate change is already a matter of survival. We need to act now to ensure a better future,” said Frances Seymour, the director of the Bogor-based Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), a leading group of forest scientists.
“The adaptation challenge is being treated as secondary to mitigation, and yet the two are inextricably linked.”
CIFOR presented a report at the UN climate talks being held until Dec. 12 in Poznan, Poland, where representatives from 190 countries are meeting to work toward an ambitious new global treaty on reducing harmful emissions, targeted for adoption in Denmark in December 2009.
The treaty, which follows up on recommendations made at an earlier world meeting in Bali, will replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.
Forests are often discussed in terms of carbon emissions, CIFOR said, but both national policies and international negotiations tended to overlook the need for measures to enable forests and the people who live in them to adapt to climate change.
“The people living in forests are highly dependent on forest goods and services and are often very vulnerable socioeconomically,” said the report’s lead author, Bruno Locatelli.
“They usually have a much more intimate understanding of their forests than anyone else, but the unprecedented rates of climate change will almost certainly jeopardize their ability to adapt to new conditions. They will need help.”
Forests provide millions of people with income, food, medicines and building materials.
Seymour said adaptation strategies should build on local knowledge about forest management in the face of climatic variability. The strategies should also help locals to take action appropriate to their own local circumstances, she said.
According to UN data, 7.3 million hectares of forest worldwide was lost every year between 2000 and 2005, an area the size of Sierra Leone or Panama.
Meanwhile, a U.S. repre-sentative was quoted by the Associated Press as saying that governments are looking to its new leadership in reaching a global climate treaty.
Robert Orr, assistant secre-tary-general for policy coordination and strategic planning,
said president-elect Barack Obama’s comments on the need to address climate change have raised “a lot of hope” — particularly when some governments, nervous about the economic crisis, are talking about delaying their efforts to curb emissions, AP reported.
The Kyoto Protocol requires signatories to cut emissions by an average 5 percent from
1990 levels.
The United States has con-tinued to refuse to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on the grounds it would damage U.S. businesses and did not make the same requirements of emerging economies, especially major emitters such as India and China.
Obama, however, has promised to establish annual targets to reduce U.S. emissions to their 1990 levels by 2020 and reduce them by another 80 percent by 2050, AP said.
| 
|
|
|
|
|
|
|