Comments on: Overseas Development Institute: the challenge of forest governance

By: Hemant Ojha

Hemant Ojha — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 08:54:49 +0000

I agree with Neil Bird that focusing on economic rewards to conserve forest does not match with the complex socio-political reality of deforestation. Carbon offset in forestry is driven by a complex sets of political relationships among loggers, smugglers, corrupt officials, poor villagers seeking day to day employment for survival, instable national politics, and the like, which cannot be solved simply by putting more money. Also, the conventional aid modality has also failed. What we need is a mixture of fund and market that address all important drivers of deforestation, as well as transfer funds subject to some agreed performance index – such as policy development, setting up institutions and procedures and forest conserved.

By: Ndameu Benoit

Ndameu Benoit — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 11:13:07 +0000

We just organise a national workshop on the Underlying causes of deforestation and forest degradation in Cameroon, if someone is intereted in have a copy of the report, please send to us an email.
thanks in advance

By: Anon

Anon — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 16:31:15 +0000

ODI’s blog in response to the ‘Eliasch Review’ demonstrates three points. Firstly, there is a disconnect between the UK government’s position on forests and climate change and conventional wisdom on forestry governance and climate change espoused by the likes of ODI and other UK research institutes. Secondly, if there is there such a difference in opinion between the government and UK research institutes, is the government refusing to listen to seasoned researchers on forestry or are these researchers failing to influence policy decisions made by government? Most likely it is a combination of both yet as the limitations of the Eliasch Review suggest, this lack of communication needs to be rapidly addressed.

Finally, the UK government’s work on climate change and developing countries (where most REDD countries will be) exposes a lack of policy coherence between the various departments working on climate change in developing countries. The government’s work on climate change is being pushed and pulled between various departments within Whitehall to the detriment of creating a holistic approach that is meeded to gel climatic and development agendas together.

The government needs to be more open as to how it envisions forwarding its climate/ development agenda in developing countries and come up with a strategy used to inform all policy making on this area. A public consultation is needed to bring together the various government departments working on climate change – DECC, DFID, FCO, BERR, DEFRA and the Treasury – in order to better understand the key policy areas driving the debate and whether these are the most appropriate ones available.