Richard Black, BBC News 13 Jul 08;
Demand for land to grow food, fuel crops and wood is set to outstrip supply, leading to the probable destruction of forests, a report warns.
The Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) says only half of the extra land needed by 2030 is available without eating into tropical forested areas.
A companion report documents poor progress in reforming land ownership and governance in developing countries.
Both reports will be launched on Monday in UK government offices in London.
Supporters of RRI include the UK's Department of International Development (DfID) and its equivalents in Sweden and Switzerland.
"Arguably, we are on the verge of a last great global land grab," said RRI's Andy White, co-author of the major report, Seeing People through the Trees.
"It will mean more deforestation, more conflict, more carbon emissions, more climate change and less prosperity for everyone."
Rising demand for food, biofuels and wood for paper, building and industry means that 515 million hectares of extra land will be needed for growing crops and trees by 2030, RRI calculates.
But only 200 million hectares will be available without dipping into tropical forests.
Forest focus
The report foresees demand increasing further into the century.
It cites studies suggesting that "...if the current plateau in productivity continues, the amount of additional agricultural land required just to meet the world's projected food demand in 2050 would be about three billion hectares, nearly all of which would be required in developing countries."
According to UN figures, the world currently has about 1.4 billion hectares of arable land and about 3.4 billion hectares of pasture.
Some academics place their hopes in agricultural technologies including genetic engineering to boost crop yields.
But since the spectacular successes of the Green Revolution, advances have been slow. In some areas, yields are falling - a trend which is likely to be exacerbated by climate change.
However, eating into tropical forests to create extra agricultural land would, in turn, exacerbate climate change, with deforestation currently accounting for about 20% of greenhouse gas emissions.
Reform call
One of RRI's key conclusions is that reform of land ownership is crucial, if large-scale pillage of tropical forests is to be avoided.
The conclusion is supported by DfID, whose minister Gareth Thomas will be speaking at the launch event.
"These new studies should strengthen global resolve to protect the property rights of indigenous and local communities who play a vital role in protecting one the most outstanding natural wonders of the world," he said.
DfID runs programmes in West Africa aimed at helping forest dwellers acquire the legal right to manage their land.
"It is clear that the dual crises of fuel and food are attracting significant new investments and great land speculation," said Andy White.
"Only by protecting the rights of the people who live in and around the world's most vulnerable forests can we prevent the devastation these forces will wreak on the poor."
But the second RRI report - From Exclusion to Ownership? - says progress in reforming ownership has been slow, with only a few countries such as Brazil, Cameroon and Tanzania handing over significant tracts to local communities.
Moves to curb climate change by preserving forests in developing countries could help, RRI concludes. But it also raises the question of who owns rights to the trees - the rich Western countries that want to fund carbon sequestration, or the people who live in the forest areas?
Sorting out ownership could not only help on the environmental front, but also remove reasons for conflict. RRI calculates that about two-thirds of the world's current violent conflicts are driven by land tenure issues.
Forest funding 'could put billions in wrong hands'
David Adam, The Guardian 14 Jul 08;
The rush to protect forests as a way to tackle global warming could see billions of pounds handed over to corrupt politicians, criminals and polluting industries, experts have warned.
The Rights and Resources Initiative, a coalition of groups from around the world, says not enough has been done to address land rights in tropical countries, where much of the money is being directed. Without clearer guidelines on land ownership and involvement by local people, they say, the funds provided by rich countries, including Britain, to protect trees could fuel violent conflict and fail to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Deforestation causes about a fifth of man-made greenhouse gas emissions, and how to protect the huge stocks of carbon locked in tropical forests has become a key issue in the climate change debate. Sir Nicholas Stern, in his 2006 review of the economics of the problem, said that £2.5bn a year could be enough to prevent deforestation across the eight most important countries. Britain and Norway have already pledged £108m to a fund to protect forests in the Congo basin. Rich countries paying tropical regions to protect forests is likely to form part of a new global climate deal to replace the Kyoto protocol, which could be agreed next year.
Stern also said that a series of institutional and policy reforms were needed, including forest property rights. Without such changes, said Andy White, coordinator of the initiative, the money aimed at protecting trees could go to central government officials, many of whom were closely tied to illegal logging and mining activities. He said direct payments to local groups would be more effective, but that required them to be given clear land rights. Evidence from Mexico, Guatemala and Brazil showed that local communities protected the forests better than governments, he said.
White added: "These forests are often in lawless regions with a history of conflict. We have huge concerns about sending all this money in the name of fighting climate change if the land rights for people living there are not resolved. It could cause more violence, benefit only a wealthy elite and lead to even greater carbon emissions.
"We think it would be a terrible mistake to reduce development funding purely to carbon and mitigating climate change. This poses a real dilemma for governments of conscience like the UK. They risk undermining all of their development and human rights work in this area if efforts to protect carbon don't support and strengthen community land rights and organisations."
Two reports from the Rights and Resources Initiative, published today, show that progress on land rights has slowed in recent years. The group says just 27% of developing-country forest is owned by local communities, or designated for their use. It warns that the next two decades could see the remaining forests threatened by the "last great global land grab", with booming demand for land to grow food, biofuels and wood products.
White said more effort was needed to map remote forests and register the people who live there to protect their interests. "We know how to do this. It's not rocket science, it just needs to be scaled up." He praised steps Britain has taken in the Congo basin.
Gareth Thomas, green minister at the Department for International Development, said: "We don't spend money on any project if we can't be certain that the money is going to go where it is needed. But we have to step up work on land-use management, ownership issues and improving governance. We have made quite a lot of progress, but it is not realistic that we can sort out every land use issue by the time of the next climate treaty."
James Heneage, the director of the Prince's Rainforests Project, a group set up by the Prince of Wales to work out a mechanism to fund forest protection, said a focus on land rights risked delaying efforts to protect the climate. He said: "The issue of land rights is important and must be looked at, but it is also an intractable problem and will take time to solve. We are in a state of emergency with climate change and we cannot allow the issue of land rights to delay getting serious amounts of money into forests to stop deforestation."
World's forests 'threatened by food, fuel demands'
Yahoo News 14 Jul 08;
The world's forests will be gobbled up by an escalating demand for fuel and food unless steps are taken to hand the people who live in them greater rights, two reports published here Monday said.
The US-based Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), an international coalition of forest governance and conservation groups, warned that widespread deforestation would make climate change more severe.
It would also push the billion or so people dependent on forests further into poverty and trigger conflicts, the coalition's reports said.
The international community must work to empower poor forest-dwellers if the loss of forest and its consequences are to be avoided, the RRI concluded.
The world will need a minimum of 515 million more hectares (1.27 billion acres) by 2030, in order to grow food, bio-energy and wood products, said the reports.
This is almost twice the amount of available land and equal to an area 12 times the size of Germany, the RRI said.
"Arguably we are on the verge of a last great global land grab," said RRI co-ordinator Andy White.
"Unless steps are taken, traditional forest owners, and the forests themselves, will be the big losers.
"It will mean more deforestation, more conflict, more carbon emissions, more climate change and less prosperity for everyone."
The RRI found that developing countries' governments claimed an overwhelming majority of forests and had made limited progress in recognising local land rights.
The report said that left open the potential for violence, as some of the world's poorest peoples struggled to hold on to their only asset: the forest land.
The biggest carbon emitters from deforestation, including Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Democratic Republic of Congo should be targeted for investment in land rights reform, the research urged.
"It is clear from the research that the dual crises of fuel and food are attracting significant new investments and great land speculation," White said.
"Only by protecting the rights of the people who live in and around the world's most vulnerable forests can we prevent the devastation these forces will wreak on the poor and the poorly governed hinterlands.
"In the process, our studies have shown that we will protect the forests themselves by recognising the rights of the people with the most to lose if they are destroyed."
The reports' conclusions are supported by Britain's Department for International Development.
"These new studies should strengthen global resolve to protect the property rights of indigenous and local communities who play a vital role in protecting one of the most outstanding natural wonders of the world," said International Development Minister Gareth Thomas.
Population Boom Will Pressure Forests - Reports
PlanetArk 15 Jul 08;
LONDON - Booming demand for food, fuel and wood as the world's population surges from six to nine billion will put unprecedented and unsustainable demand on the world's remaining forests, two new reports said on Monday.
The reports from the US-based Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) said this massive potential leap in deforestation could add to global warming and put pressure on indigenous forest dwellers that could lead to conflict.
"Arguably we are on the verge of the last great global land grab," said Andy White, co-author of "Seeing People Through the Trees," one of the two reports.
"Unless steps are taken, traditional forest owners, and the forests themselves, will be the big losers. It will mean more deforestation, more conflict, more carbon emissions, more climate change and less prosperity for everyone."
RRI is a global coalition of environmental and conservation non-government organisations with a particular focus on forest protection and management and the rights of forest peoples.
White's report said that unless agricultural productivity rises sharply, new land equivalent in size to 12 Germanys will have to be cultivated for crops to meet food and biofuel demand by 2030.
Virtually all of it is likely to be in developing countries, principally land that is currently forested.
The second report, "From Exclusion to Ownership", noted that governments still claim ownership of most forests in developing countries, but said they had done little to ensure the rights and tenure of forest dwellers.
It said people whose main source of livelihood is the forests were usually the best custodians of the forests and their biodiversity.
RRI said governments were failing to prevent industrial incursions into indigenous lands. Its report noted that cultivation of soy and sugar cane for biofuels in Brazil is expected to require up to 128 million hectares of land by 2020, up from 28 million hectares now, with much of it likely to come from deforestation in the Amazon.
"We face a deficit of democracy plagued by violent conflict and human rights abuses," said Ghanaian civil rights lawyer Kyeretwie Opoku, commenting on the reports.
"We must address underlying inequalities by consulting and allowing forest peoples to make decisions the themselves regarding the actions of industry and conservation," he added. (Reporting by Jeremy Lovell; Editing by Catherine Evans)
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