Amidst a changing climate, deforestation due to conversion of lands into various uses contributes to almost 17-20% of greenhouse gas emissions. One way or another, we all are part of the problem, however, at the Global Landscape Forum in Lima, we’re turning the tables by being part of the solution.

We want to hear your thoughts and insights about how we can be part of the solution to the problems we’re facing. We encourage you to take a look at the questions below and write a comment at the bottom of this blogpost that can help us find collaborative and creative solutions to address climate change problems.

Countries as diverse as Indonesia, Brazil, the Congo Basin, Malaysia, and Peru all have something in common: tropical forests and shifting landscapes. Due to the increasing demand for food, fuel and forest products, these countries are experiencing unprecedented land-use changes.

By far, the biggest driver of land use change is agricultural expansion. And for the countries mentioned above, oil palm is one of the biggest players. Palm oil plantations are already occupying over 11 million hectares and are expanding rapidly, having major impacts on global emissions and biodiversity.

Indonesia, Malaysia, Brazil, the Congo Basin and Peru also have something else in common. They’ve all committed to a climate finance mechanism that has aims to reduce emissions from the forest sector and mitigate impacts of climate change. Perhaps you’ve heard of it?

Billions of dollars have been pledged to Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+). Here’s a 3 minute animation introducing the REDD+ mechanism:

You would probably think that as a mechanism designed to tackle emissions from forest clearing, REDD+ would be focused on the largest cause of forests clearing — Oil palm.

But REDD+ initiatives have largely failed to address the expansion of oil palm plantations. We want to know why this is and what youth can do about it.

Help us find out by posting your thoughts on this question in the comments box at the end of this blogpost:

Q: What might be the main reasons that REDD+ is not really addressing oil palm expansion?

We (Rizza Karen Veridiano and Gabriel Yarleque) will take your responses to an interactive workshop at the Global Landscapes Forum youth session in Peru to more deeply explore how climate mitigation mechanisms such as REDD+ can better address agricultural drivers of deforestation. We’ll also be looking at how young people can become more engaged in these activities.

After the discussion, Claudio Castro will be pitching recommendations to a panel of experts who hopefully can help us take these forward to inform future REDD+ management plans.

We’re looking forward on your insights and innovative solutions and hopefully translate these into concrete actions during the Global Landscapes Forum!

Karen, Gabriel and Claudio

The post JOIN THE DISCUSSION: How can youth ensure that REDD+ initiatives address oil palm expansion? appeared first on Global Landscapes Forum.

This blog was written by Joan Baxter for Forest News, Center for International Forestry Research

What on Earth does “integrated landscape management” mean? If you ask 78 different scientists, you just might get 78 different answers, participants at a recent land-use conference found. Consensus on definitions is a hallmark of science. When there is no consensus, though, things can get unwieldy — especially where science meets policy.

So it goes for the “landscape approach” to sustainable development, a framework that encompasses the full spectrum of land uses and actors for land use and management.

The term “landscape” has become commonplace in the global discourse on sustainable development and management of land and other natural resources, but the scientific community has yet to agree on a single definition for “landscape approaches,” probably for good reason. At the recent conference on Landscapes for People, Food and Nature, organized by EcoAgriculture Partners and the World Agroforestry Centre in Nairobi, Kenya, participants learned there were no fewer than 78 different terms that allude to integrated landscape management.

In recent years, the research community has spent a great deal of time and intellectual energy trying to narrow down the terminology around the terms “landscapes” to conjure a universally accepted definition for landscapes and landscape management. The knowledge that a plethora of terms is of little use when dealing with multiple stakeholders has led to recent efforts within the research community to provide a more cohesive framework for the landscape approach.

When the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and partners published a paper outlining 10 principles that distill the landscape approach down to its essential elements, it didn’t advance to the next stage of what that means on the ground.

At the time the paper was published, there was a great deal of interest from the media: The question they wanted the authors to answer was where the landscape approach had been applied successfully, so they could see the results. The problem? There were few places where it had been explicitly applied.

The thorny issue of terminology around landscapes threatens to derail the discussion and distract us from the actual value and scope of the approach. To resolve this, CIFOR scientists are now undertaking a systematic mapping exercise in an effort to refine just what the landscape approach represents in practice, but avoiding strict definition, due to the plethora of implementation strategies.

“We will be using evidence-based research in the form of systematic mapping,” CIFOR researcher James Reed said. “This is a methodology developed in the medical sciences and more recently adopted by the natural and social sciences.” The aim, Reed said, is to synthesize the currently fragmented evidence base related to landscape approaches and understand what the “approach” actually represents.

Using pre-determined criteria, the team will screen the literature for relevance and quality to develop two maps — one with conceptual frameworks for landscape approaches produced by various institutions, and a second interactive one to show where and how landscape approaches are being or have been implemented.

According to Liz Deakin, a CIFOR post-doctoral fellow also working on the review, it is “hugely important” to clarify what the landscape approach means on the ground,. “Right now there is a great deal of confusion surrounding what it represents and why we need it,” she said.

The mapping process will draw on peer-reviewed literature from multiple sources, but it will also seek out non-peer-reviewed documents of relevance such as dissertation theses, field notes, policy briefs and other “gray literature.”

The systematic map, which is to be completed and presented at the upcoming Global Landscapes Forum in Lima, Peru, in December 2014, should help move the discourse on landscapes beyond definitions and fuzzy thinking so researchers can concentrate on applying and further refining landscape approaches, which — unlike the alternatives — offer entry points for negotiation among competing land users.

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