Q&A session

DAY1Session 2Session 2 – SFM in the Context of REDD+ Implementation – Q&A Session(Q1: WWF, Ms. Mikako Awano) My question is mainly to Dr. Durst, but somehow involving our older
colleague from Canada. In Dr. Thompson’s presentation, you mentioned about how the lack ofgovernance is a very key factor in why sustainable forest management sometimes fail. At the same, inthe presentation of Dr. Durst, you pointed out the REDD+ contribution to sustainable forest
management, and this is a renewed emphasis on governance. Here in these two approaches about
governance issues, do you think that REDD+ is really contributing to improvement of the governance,
which is a very key factor for sustainable forest management so far? I have a little bit doubt on it.
The second point is about the cost aspect. As Dr. Thompson’s presentation pointed out, I
think the main reason why the certification scheme is not so well progressing in developing countries ascompared to developed countries is because they put importance on the so-called short-term income.
Thinking of the REDD+ structure, it is very hard to bring about some very short-term benefits to local
people. In your view how can we overcome the kind of gap or the necessary lengths of the time tobring about the contribution to local people?
Particularly hearing the presentation from Prof. Inoue, because you mentioned about the hightransaction cost for the engagement of the local people for sustainable forest management, I think thisis the biggest issue for REDD+ to contribute to sustainable forest management, and also the other way
around. I would like to have your view, mainly from Dr. Durst, but also very welcome others’ view onthis point.
(FAO, Dr. Patrick Durst)

The first one related to governance and whether or not I think that REDD+

is accelerating progress in that. Certainly to back up, most of these issues are not new whatsoever.
They have been a part of the efforts of sustainable forest management to move more in that direction.
Governance is certainly part of it, but like many of these other things, I think the whole push in
REDD+ is contributing and accelerating the progress. Now, the progress may be a lot slower thanmany of us would like, but I do think that there is an acceleration taking place.
In particular in some of these specific areas that REDD+ seems to have focused on more sothan in the past. If we look at some of the governance issues that have evolved in forestry and wecould take the whole arena of illegal logging and look at the history of that. When I first joined FAO
we could not even raise this issue. We could raise it, but nobody would come to a meeting and talkabout it.

Then we moved through a process which we always talk about with alcoholics; the first step

toward a solution is to admit you have a problem. We had FLEGT meetings and meetings of theministers in Bali 10 years ago. Now everybody is quite open about the issues of corruption ingovernance problems. I am not saying that we have solved the problem. I am not saying REDD+
has solved it by any means, but I think it is helping to push the agenda along quite a bit.

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I certainly agree with the observation about certification and what the motivation is forpeople. I consider certification, and the dangling of possible financial incentives in front of people
through REDD+, as simply tools to try to push people's behavior toward what we would like to. Most
likely in most cases any one of these tools may not be enough. It might be enough for some people,
but not enough to move the entire management of forests in the direction we like. This is what weoften talk about with REDD+, that is to be a part of the incentive package that helps to change
behavior and motivate better forest management.
(IUFRO-GFEP, Dr. Ian Thompson) Obviously, a carbon market would help. There is a tremendous
difference between the opportunity costs of converting a forest to an oil-palm plantation and leaving it
as a forest and deriving ecosystem services from the forest. It is about a factor of 10. In some places
it is even higher.

That equation starts to change pretty quickly when carbon starts to be valued at $50 a

ton. As Dr. Durst says, it is a form of payment for ecosystem services, but if there is a valid carbon
market then I think it will move the yardsticks tremendously.
(The University of Tokyo, Prof. Makoto Inoue)

Let me comment on governance. It is also related tothe presentation, but local people having the empowerment making the decision, and at the same time
the outsider to support the decision-making is a must in order to have this be sustainable. When it
comes to forestry or forests per se, I do not think people's wish is to simply maintain the forest itself,
but I think that the people’s wish is to look at the entire landscape including the forests; at the same time
the agricultural land together, in order to retain such forests. I think by doing so there will be morepotential.
(FAO, Dr. Patrick Durst)

I would just reinforce more what Dr. Thompson said with regard to thepackage of incentives. We have gotten quite excited about the potential of REDD+ to bring money tothe forestry sector. It has brought an increased funding in some places, but what has come so far isjust a drop in the bucket compared to what most analysts have said is really needed in order to reallymotivate and get the snowball moving at a much faster pace.

It really remains to be seen as to whether

or not these types of financial incentive packages are going to come in a major way.
Moreover, I do not think it would be productive if there was a massive influx of financing
overnight, because, as we are seeing very much in the REDD+ readiness activities, there are hugeconcerns and challenges with regard to absorptive capacity. It takes a long time to build up thecapacity on a lot of these things, particularly in some of the countries that have a history of weak
governance and weak capacity technically.
(Q2: FAO, Dr. Maria Jose Sanz-Sanchez)

I would like to be a bit provocative, because I found that the2

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three presentations were very interesting and they have complementarity; the practical perspective of Dr.
Durst, which was very well articulated, the scientific perspective of Dr. Thompson, which was also quiet
puzzling there, and the social perspective of Prof. Inoue.
Having these three perspectives in the table and the difficulties that these three sorts ofcommunities: implementers, scientists, and social scientists have to integrate things.

I will be

provocative and say given the fact that nothing seems to be very new in what we are trying to address,
and those challenges are in the three sorts of areas: scientific understanding, social understanding, andhow to put these all things in practice. What do you think we should learn from the past, keeping in
mind the nice picture of Dr. Durst about how the hot topics have been moving along, to do better on
REDD+?
I will just turn around the question. What REDD+ could do is create problems more thansolutions, and how we should avoid that. I know it is not an easy question, but it will be nice to learnfrom your experience from the three areas you have been trying to explain to us.
(FAO, Dr. Patrick Durst)

It is an excellent question, nice and provocative, and very difficult. Like I

said in my presentation, if we had all the answers and knew how to do this easily, we would have done ita long time ago.
For me, the one lesson maybe from the past that jumps out is not to make things toocomplicated. This is from the international perspective and the negotiator’s perspective. I think wehave already made that mistake.

We need to try to make these concepts simple enough that the averagedecision maker can readily understand them.

They are very difficult concepts, but we need tosomehow translate them to the point where the people down at the forest level also understand what weare trying to do. They do not have to understand all of the science and they do not have to understandall of the negotiations and diplomacy and intricacies of it, but it has to be translated in a way that makes
sense for the local people to change their behavior.
I think the presentation of Prof. Inoue here was excellent in that regard. The perspectivesof the local people are a lot different than those of some negotiator that goes to New York or Geneva
to talk about these things. We are asking them to change their behavior.
(IUFRO-GFEP, Dr. Ian Thompson) The science perspective on this is actually fairly easy, because
science takes part, it does not take sides. Scientists are not supposed to advocate anything, right? You
just provide the science and you can either take it or leave it. That said, I am kind of a scienceadvocate, because I really think that it is important for scientists to spend time not only learning thelocal systems but to involve local people in what they have learned. Even in Canada where I have done
most of my work, the application of the work directly into policy and directly into sustainable forest
management is only because we have worked directly with the local people who understood what it was3

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we were doing and why it was we were doing it.
It is the same thing with REDD+ here. There are a number of case studies. Any placethat there is good sustainable forest management now that has been funded by FAO or by ITTO or by
any other agency, we can learn from that and we can take that and apply it more broadly within thecontext of REDD+.
I think this idea about understanding what we have done that has worked previously from ascience perspective, from a social perspective and so on; by looking at these places where it is actuallyworking in the way in which people would like, but also which has maintained the system, the ecosystem
in a functional way. We can learn from that and apply that within the context of REDD+. I think it
is important for scientists to, not only understand those cases, but also advocate the way in which thosecases or the way in which those projects were developed; advocate that those things be used within
REDD+ to do the job properly.
(The University of Tokyo, Prof. Makoto Inoue)

Learning from the past is important. From the1970’s on, participatory forestry management was proposed. In the global community, the subject ofsuch became very important.

It has become the mainstream.

The ‘Forester Syndrome’ wasmentioned, which means that “Foresters love trees, but hate people.” People started saying that weneed to get away from that behavior. In community forestry a lot of intensive actions started to betaken.
Listening to the recent discussions on the topic of REDD+, I feel like those discussions do
not really get lessons from the past experiences. Maybe we are discussing in a different arena, different
stage, or different context. However, the past discussions had its own importance, so we can neverignore those.

Scientists and experts sometimes tend to take a paternalistic approach.

That issomething I think needs to be changed to a certain degree, otherwise we can never establish a true senseof partnership with the local community. I think Dr. Durst understands this very well, but when it
comes to the lesson of the community forestry from the past, I think this is something we should neverforget.
(FFPRI, Dr. Mituso Matsumoto) We received a very important question and we have listened to very
insightful answers.

I visited several fields, and I have seen some problems with how the approaches

have been implemented in the field. From a national point of view, we oftentimes use capacity
building. This term ‘capacity building’ sounds very one-way, unilateral; it does not sound engaging.
An important concept is how we can better engage local communities to do activities. Prof. Inouepointed that out. That is very important.
(Q3: IGES, Dr. Makino Yamanoshita) Building on the current discussion, I have a question to Prof.

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Inoue.

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The importance of community participation has been discussed in the past and is wellunderstood, but the community-based forest management system and within that system its importance
now is well understood. However, in reality, I do not think that concept is well reflected. That is myobservation. This is not limited to forestry, but also it applies to the other domestic Japanese policies
and systems. Given that background, we have a new way of doing things. When we do things
differently from the past, what exactly can local communities do? What do decision makers need to
pay attention to in order to make sure that they can fully engage the local community when they do newthings or when they try a new approach? If you have any concrete ideas I would love to hear them.
(The University of Tokyo, Prof. Makoto Inoue)

The researchers and stakeholders in the forest

management have had that problem. I cannot give you a concrete answer because the situation differsfrom one local area to another. There should be a starting point, I believe, at the central national levelor at a global level, the participants of the discussion needs to pay field visits, and they need to spendsome time together with the local people in order to get the first-hand experiences as to how local
people live in that place. I think that should be the starting point. I cannot think of any otherstarting point.
Regarding the forester syndrome concept I mentioned, in one book I once said that theperspective of the foresters, the perspective of the experts, and the perspective of the actual residents
are different. Foresters do have responsibilities to play, meaning that they need to sustainably manage
forests. Sometimes they feel the local communities are against them. At one point, the local residents
see the foresters as their enemy. When we implement REDD+, sometimes the local communities donot really understand what the foresters are trying to do, and they become quite suspicious. In order tobreak down that miscommunication, I think as a starting point we need to go to the field.

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