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Huffington Post: At Global Climate Change Talks, an Answer Grows Right Outside
As written by Luis Ubiñas, President, the Ford Foundation and published by the Huffington Post.
Posted: November 29, 2010 10:00 AM
At Global Climate Change Talks, an Answer Grows Right Outside
This week, the international community is gathering in the Mexican city of Cancún to address one of the most serious and intractable issues facing the planet today: climate change.
When the conversation
turns to how to protect forests that help reduce greenhouse gases, the
participants need look no further than right out their windows. Mexico
has become a global leader in safeguarding its expansive forests. And it
has done so not by fencing the forests behind "no trespassing" signs,
but by giving local communities ownership rights and an opportunity to
take responsibility for their stewardship. Indeed, communities now own
more than 60 percent of Mexico's forests.
Surprisingly, this success story is one that most people, and even many Mexicans, are unaware of.
The
destruction of forests is responsible for almost one-fifth of all
greenhouse gas emissions; that's more than all global transportation
combined. Part of the challenge in addressing this issue is that these
spaces are often seen as pristine, empty places devoid of people and
commerce.
In reality, the world's forests are not only home
to hundreds of millions of people, but they also are a key source of
these people's livelihoods. For these individuals (many of whom are
indigenous, tribal peoples), forests are a source of food, energy,
medicine, housing and income.
The Mexican model has shown
that giving communities the ability to own and manage the forests where
they live provides perhaps the greatest incentive imaginable to protect
and preserve the forests. Mexico's experience in promoting environmental
protection and economic development by expanding community rights to
forests is a model that other countries can and must follow.
There
are literally thousands of communities in Mexico that own and manage
forests, resulting in an array of successful and sustainable forestry
enterprises. Ixtlán de Juarez, a forest community near the southern
Mexican city of Oaxaca, serves as a good example. Local ownership there
has created what one observer calls "an innovative model of community
capitalism." Locals have maintained a saw mill, built a large tree
nursery, partnered with neighboring communities to launch a furniture
business from timber culled from their land and created an ecotourism
destination.
In Ixtlán and elsewhere, forest ownership has
created tens of thousands of jobs and provided a burst of new economic
activity. And with profits being reinvested into social programs, these
initiatives are also strengthening the communities and ensuring their
long-term viability. Throughout Mexico, these sorts of arrangements have
helped stanch the flow of economic migrants and minimize the illegal
activities that plague un-managed forests.
But the best news
is that community forestry has the potential to slow down global
warming by reducing deforestation. A 2009 study published by the
National Academy of Sciences, for example, looked at 80 forests across
Asia, Africa and Latin America and found that giving communities greater
control over forests resulted in lower carbon emissions. In fact, in
many parts of Mexico and elsewhere, community-owned forests have been at
least as effective at maintaining forest cover as even parks or
protected conservation areas.
This week's meeting in Cancún
has the potential to build on these results. One of the main topics on
the agenda will be an initiative titled "Reducing Emissions from
Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD)," which would provide
incentives for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from forested areas.
It's
vital that the nations gathered in Cancún make strong financial
commitments to REDD -- but more importantly, that they ensure that a
significant portion of these funds are dedicated to supporting
community-managed forests. They should also ensure that future REDD
initiatives respect and promote community stewardship. Doing so can
motivate other developing countries with large forest tracts, such as
Indonesia and Central African countries, to follow Mexico's lead in
preserving forests by giving communities greater ownership over them.
In
my own experience at the Ford Foundation, we've seen that even in the
poorest countries, a small investment in community forestry can reap
enormous dividends. In Guatemala, for example, community-owned forests
are bucking a larger wave of deforestation across the country, while in
Brazil, the Kayapo Indians are preserving forests that would otherwise
fall into the hands of ranchers and loggers.
The fact that
sustainable economic development can be done in combination with
preventing deforestation represents an all too rare win-win for both the
rights of indigenous peoples and the fight against global warming. At a
time when the struggle against global warming seems more daunting than
ever, Mexico's experience with community forestry shows that we have
within our means the ability to turn the tide.
Posted By Lopaka Purdy at 2:44pm on November 29, 2010
Comments: 0
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