Closing Session
Hirata Yasumasa (Director, REDD Research and Development Center,FFPRI)

Closing Session

Closing Session
Hirata Yasumasa (Director, REDD Research and Development Center, FFPRI)
Thank you all for staying on for many hours throughout the day today for this international seminar,“REDD-plus Start-up Year 2020: Roadmap to Result-based and Transferable Outcomes for Sustainable
Development.”

We have had a very intensive and hot discussion, and good information sharing.

The reason

why we used “Start-up Year” for the name of this international seminar is, in 2007, when COP13 was held, webegan the discussion on that for the first time.
contain CO2 emission.
to act.

Deforestation and degradation of forests can be tackled toSince 13 years ago, we have continued on with our discussion and finally, we are ready

FFPRI sent experts to COP13.

For the past 13 years for this specific topic from a research, science,and technology perspective, we have done substantial contribution.
As was mentioned several times today, this Research and Development Center marks the 10th anniversary.
We have done longstanding research and development.

For the past 10 years, there had been side events ofUNFCCC, as well as technical seminars and workshops.

We have had 42 of these events on REDD alone,which means that we have had so many challenges for us to discuss.

Dr. Buszko-Briggs mentioned today thatthat task is complicated and challenging, but as we try to work on this, we need to solve challenges one at atime.

There has been a stockpiling challenges that we had to solve one by one.

The past 13 years have been long, and the year we began the discussion, in Brazil, there had been greatcommitment issued by the government to carry out monitoring to try to reduce deforestation.
last summer, because of development activities, there has been deforestation.

After 13 years,

Also you may have seen thewildfires and forest fires on TV in Brazil, but it was the development as well that caused deforestation.

It isnot easy to strive for a major goal like this.
As was discussed today, we have to have local participants in REDD+ projects.
been emphasized once again.

That importance has

Nonetheless, REDD+ can mitigate climate change, but this is a global challenge.

You will not be able to see the direct impact on a personal level.
time for project proponents to feel that impact.

On a specific project level, it takes a longThat makes it difficult for local community members toparticipate in REDD projects.
Dr. Nyi Nyi Kyaw said that they are actually promoting both mitigation and adaptation at the same time.
Adaptation is usually tackling local scale issues, like harvesting mangroves could cause a larger disaster due tohurricanes.

It is a pain that the local citizens directly feel and it is easy to persuade them to participate.

Ofcourse, you have to make sure there is sufficient financing, but you need to combine mitigation and adaptation,
especially in development.

It will be very difficult to separate them.

In developing countries, it is very

important.
Dr. Takamura of the University of Tokyo

said that REDD+ is a good way to achieve SDGs.

13 targets related to climate change and there are 15 goals related to ecology.
to poverty.

It is also related to the SDG related to water.

achieving the SDGs.

There are

There is also one target related

Promoting REDD+ can contribute greatly towards

The limited resources need to be used as efficiently as possible for forest conservation

253

Closing Session
activities so that we can actually control and reduce deforestation and forest degradation, but we think it is fully
possible to achieve this initial goal.

We, at the REDD Research and Development Center, are working toachieve the goals of REDD+, and working on issues contributing to mitigation and adaptation throughresearch.

We have consolidated this knowhow into various technical documents, which are also available on

our website, as well as in a printed format.

We hope you will make good use of these materials that we haveprepared.
I would like to express our regards to the speakers who came today.
and might be quite exhausted from your long travel.
time out of their busy schedules to come here.

Many of you came from far away

We are also very grateful to the participants, who took

With that word of gratitude, I would like to declare that thisseminar is finished.

254