Forever Sabah Workshop with Community Conservation Leaders

A selection of community conservation initiatives from

around Sabah and a timeline of key events.

From 21-22 June, Holly Shrumm (Natural Justice) joined a Forever Sabah workshop of community conservation leaders. Forever Sabah is a 25-year initiative that aims to build a fair, prosperous and sustainable Sabah (Malaysia) by pioneering the state’s transition to a diversified green economy. It aims to change the development and economic trajectory of the State by rebalancing the economy from its historical over-reliance on and exploitation of natural habitats (particularly forests, rivers and seas).

The workshop focused on more than ten leading community conservation initiatives, including Native Forest Reserves, Community Use Zones (co-management with state protected areas), reforestation, eco-tourism, and natural resource-based enterprises. It used Open Space Technology to identify, explore, and brainstorm next steps on a range of key issues such as land, sustainable use of natural resources, economic opportunities, and leadership.

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RRI Reports on Secure Land Tenure

The Rights and Resources Initiative has released two ground-breaking reports highlighting the importance of secure land tenure in broader national and international law and policy and for investors. 

“Landowners or Laborers: What choice will developing countries make?” considers the implications of policies, especially in Africa, that seek rapid development by ceding control of land and resources to external actors. It contrasts these policies with the successes of China and Brazil, which have achieved advances through establishing local property rights rather than undercutting them. It further summarises the state of resources and rights globally, and identifies the key choices and challenges faced by developing countries in 2012. The report can be downloaded here. 

“The Financial Risks of Insecure Land Tenure: An Investment View” considers the assumption that cheap land can be acquired to derive high profits easily. The report challenges this view, arguing that exploiting land with disputed tenure rights leads to significant risks. The paper can be downloaded here.

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Guide to Investing in Locally Controlled Forestry

The Growing Forest Partnership initiative, in partnership with the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation, the International Institute for Environment and Development, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, The Forests Dialogue and the World Bank, has released a “Guide to Investing in Locally Controlled Forestry” authored by Dominic Elson. 

Per the press release, the guide “emerged out of 11 international dialogues that assembled more than 400 people to discuss how to make investing in locally controlled forestry (ILCF) happen. It is a primarily a tool for practical action – providing guidance on how to structure enabling investments and prepare the ground for asset investments that yield acceptable returns and reduced risk, not only for investors, but also for local forest right-holders, national governments and society at large. After providing strong justification for this approach, the guide sets out a framework for structuring investments with tactical advice for building the partnerships necessary for successful ILCF.” 

Read more about the guide here. Download the guide directly here.

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Resource Media Report on Ecosystem Services Messaging and Strategy

Via the Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation (ESPA) research programme, a new report has been released by Resource Media on public communications strategies and "messaging" for ecosystem service policies. The report was developed through in-depth interviews with ecosystems services practitioners, government officials, and other stakeholders, through a survey of media and digital coverage of ecosystem services projects, and a review of a wide range of materials produced by practitioners. The report finds that out of 16 terms to describe the benefits of nature, “ecosystem services” and “natural capital” ranked 13th and 15th, respectively, as the terms were found to be difficult to understand and inadequate in conveying meaning by those surveyed. 

On messaging, the report recommends a clearer discussion of nature’s value and benefits instead of using the term ‘ecosystem services’. To achieve this, it recommends discussing specific lands and areas, the acknowledgement of nature’s intangible and incalculable benefits, increased emphasis on the gap in traditional economic analysis’s ability to understand and quantify nature’s benefits, and using plain English over jargon. 

Find a summary of the report’s findings on ESPA’s blog here. Download the full report here.

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E-Module on REDD+ for Communities

Human activities are consuming huge amounts of fossil fuels and raw materials that are creating massive amounts of persistent gases that are dramatically changing weather patterns in unpredictable ways. Deforestation contributes an estimated 18-25% of carbon emissions. The idea behind the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD+) programme is to generate funds to reduce emissions through forest conservation in order to slow the onset of climate change. Since most of the world’s remaining forests are in the ‘developing world’ and most of the world’s emissions are from the ‘developed world’, the majority of funding for REDD+ will be directed from the latter to the former. As REDD+ is implemented, communities will be significantly impacted, often negatively. 

In this context, Natural Justice has prepared a draft e-module on REDD+ for communities. The module seeks to prepare communities, especially communities developing biocultural community protocols, to engage proactively with the international framework of REDD+. It briefly describes the rationale behind and plans for REDD+. It then looks at the key issues that have emerged around REDD+, focusing especially on the concerns with its current status and the safeguards that are being developed to attempt to protect community rights. It closes by looking at the current forms in which REDD+ is being implemented. 

The full e-module can be downloaded here. Other e-modules drafted by Natural Justice can be accessed here. These modules supplement ‘BCPs: A Toolkit for Community Facilitators’, which can be viewed here. The documents are not final and any comments can be directed to Holly Shrumm (holly (at) naturaljustice.org) and Harry Jonas (harry (at) naturaljustice.org).

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Forever Sabah Stakeholder Meeting

Last week Harry Jonas attended an NGO stakeholder meeting for a bold new project being developed in Malaysia: Forever Sabah. The meeting was convened by LEAP and attended by a range of NGOs including Borneo Conservancy, PACOS, Hutan, WWF, and Global Diversity Foundation. Forever Sabah is a full-scale reintegration of economic, social and environmental issues at the landscape level towards a paradigm shift to a "greener" economic and governance model. Harry provided input on Natural Justice's work on the green economy and green governance, about which more can be read here. More information on Forever Sabah can be found on LEAP's website.

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Recap: Meeting on Green Governance and the Green Economy

From 15-16 August, Natural Justice and the Indigenous Peoples of Africa Coordinating Committee (IPACC) co-hosted a meeting of Indigenous African leaders on the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) Green Economy Initiative. The first day of the meeting focused on discussing and understanding the content and implications of the UNEP Green Economy Initiative with respect to governance over their territories and stewardship over their resources.

During the second day, participants prepared the first draft of a statement of African Indigenous principles to further engage the Green Economy Initiative based on the bio-cultural or stewardship rights of African Indigenous peoples over their territories and resources within international and domestic law and policy. Participants also elaborated an action plan for sharing these principles and views with the African Group of Negotiators in the so-called Rio Conventions (UNCBD, UNFCCC, and UNCCD), with influential policy bodies such as African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN), UNEP, and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and with the Global Indigenous Peoples' Caucus and IPACC’s members and allies. The meeting was supported by UNEP and the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA).

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Meeting on Green Governance and the Green Economy

From 15-16 August in Cape Town, Natural Justice, in partnership with the Indigenous Peoples of Africa Coordinating Committee (IPACC) will be organizing a meeting of representatives of African Indigenous peoples on "The Green Economy Initiative: Green Governance Challenges". The meeting seeks to ensure that Indigenous African leaders understand the content and implications of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Green Economy Initiative with respect to governance over their territories and stewardship over their resources.

As an outcome of the meeting, IPACC and Natural Justice will cooperate to produce a response document that sets out African Indigenous views on the Rio processes, low carbon economics, strengths and weaknesses of the UNEP Initiative, challenges of governance and accountability, identification of opportunities for Indigenous peoples to conserve biocultural diversity and protect traditional knowledge, and traditional knowledge-related innovations and genetic resources. The document will further engage the UNEP Green Economy Report based on the biocultural rights of African Indigenous peoples over their territories and resources within international and domestic law and policy. The meeting will be supported by UNEP and the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA).

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