Senayan, Jakarta, Indonesia
June 28, 2013
The ASFN officially announced the adoption of recommendations forwarded by civil society organizations in Southeast Asia. In particular, these recommendations called on the ASEAN body to push their member-states to adopt country-level policy that would support greater forest access rights and security of tenure, livelihoods and community-led forest management initiatives.
The announcement has been made in a press conference in Senayan, Jakarta, Indonesia with Dr. Haryadi Himawan, Director of Social Forestry Development, Ministry of Forestry of Indonesia, ASFN Leader of Indonesia and Chairperson of ASFN Secretariat as key speaker. He will be accompanied by Mr. H. Muzni Zakaria, Regent of Solok Selatan District, West Sumatera Province. The announcement is a culmination of a series of activities organized by the ASFN three weeks prior. These include the ASFN CSO Forum held in Siem Reap, Cambodia last June 13-14, and the ASFN Conference in Luang Prabang Laos on June 17-18. The two consecutive events served as venues to review and develop the recommendations and get consensus from its constituency, which included NGOs and grassroots organizations from 8 ASEAN countries, government officials from the ASEAN member-states and the academe. The recommendations, embodied in the document CSO Proposals for Strengthening Engagement with ASEAN on Social Forestry and Climate Change, was presented by CSO representatives at the 7th ASFN Meeting in Luang Prabang, Laos on June 20-21. The ASFN Meeting, which is attended by a combination of ASFN focal points (officers) and ASOF leaders of the forestry department / ministry of each ASEAN Member State, convenes yearly to decide on forestry measures in the region.
The ASFN is a government-driven social forestry network that links government forestry policy-makers directly with members of the civil society, research organizations, academia, the private sectors and experts of related fields. The ASFN was created by the ASEAN specifically to respond to the global climate change situation through social forestry, a forest governance model that places strong emphasis on community participation as a strategy to combat deforestation and manage forests sustainably.
Social forestry is a model for forest governance that puts indigenous peoples and forest-dependent communities at the forefront of management. Social forestry is seen as a key strategy to keep the remaining forest cover in Southeast Asia standing and mitigating global climate change.Deforestation accounts for almost 1/3 of total carbon emissions worldwide, bigger than the total transport sector’s carbon emissions combined. Deforestation in Southeast Asia is currently pegged at an average of 1,086,000 ha forest area/year between 2005 and 2010 (FAO). If current trends continue, forest area in Southeast Asia will fall from 49 percent in 2010 to 46 percent in 2020 – a loss of 16 million hectares, an area just less than the size of Cambodia.
The CSO recommendation called for the ASEAN to promote social/community forestry for better understanding among its member-states and to review the social forestry and other related policies of member-states. To ensure that this recommendation is followed through, the CSOs also called for the creation of ASFN Country Teams composed of government, indigenous people, local communities and NGOs.
The CSO recommendations also includes proposals for the ASEAN to promote enabling policies for social forestry and REDD+ implementation and which support efforts to integrate REDD+ into social forestry policy and implementation level. Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) is a global initiative designed to pay groups or countries for protecting their forests and reducing emissions of greenhouse gas pollutants, especially CO₂. REDD+ could provide financial support for social forestry projects, funds from which could be used to support country efforts such as developing alternative livelihood for communities and community forest patrols.
The CSOs aslo recommended the creation of a Working Group on community livelihood, which had previously been adapted at the previous ASFN conference in 2012. An estimated 300 million people – or over 50% of the ASEAN region’s population – live in rural areas and use forests for subsistence needs, including food, fuelwood, timber, medicines and income (FAO 2010). The forthcoming ASEAN Economic Integration plan is also expected to have an impact on community and forest-based livelihoods, and as such, the CSOs call on the ASEAN to make a study.
