As discussions in the UN Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals are entering the final stage, the United Nations Non-Governmental Liaison Service (UN NGLS) interviewed CIFOR Director General Peter Holmgren on the role forestry plays in each of the 19 suggested focus areas.
UN-NGLS: On 18 March, the Co-Chairs of the Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) released a revision of the proposed 19 focus areas for the SDGs, along with an outline of 8 clusters for the focus areas, and an Annex outlining interlinkages for the focus areas. What is your feedback regarding how forests are addressed in these documents?
Peter Holmgren: Forests are mentioned under the ecosystems and biodiversity focus area. There is thus a risk that forests, just like in the MDGs, continue to be considered an “environment-only issue.” Forests are fundamental across the spectrum of development focus areas. It is essential to recognize the positive contributions forests make across goals — from poverty eradication to water and food security — as well as the opportunities that the SDGs can provide for recognizing the value of forested landscapes and forestry.
Here is the list of SDG focus areas presented with relevant and recent examples of forestry:
1. Poverty Eradication: Smallholder income from forestry, and bamboo
2. Sustainable agriculture, food security and nutrition: Forests and food security
3. Health and population dynamics: Medicinal products
4. Education: Forestry education
5. Gender equality and women’s empowerment: Gender, landscapes and climate change, Women’s perspectives in forest management
6. Water and sanitation: Watershed management
7. Energy: Bioenergy, woodfuel
8. Economic growth: Domestic timber markets, Drivers of deforestation
9. Industrialization: Timber trade
10. Infrastructure: Logistics and marketing of charcoal
11. Employment and decent work for all: Employment in forestry and other land uses
12. Promote equality: Land tenure and REDD, Rural-urban migration and implications for forest and land management
14. Sustainable consumption and production: Impact of demand for food products
15. Climate: REDD
16. Conservation and sustainable use of marine resources, oceans and seas: Mangroves
17. Ecosystems and biodiversity: Biodiversity and forest management
18. Means of implementation/Global partnership for sustainable development: The Landscape Fund
19. Peaceful and non-violent societies, rule of law and capable institutions: Good governance and investments in REDD
We are now presented with a great opportunity to reframe “forestry” and connect across the full range of focus areas. Some will still argue that such an approach will fragment forestry and diminish the role of forestry institutions. To this, one may ask the counter-question whether, in the past decades, it has served the forestry discipline well to isolate the sector in dedicated institutions. Can we claim that significant progress has been made? Have cross-cutting landscape approaches been promoted? Have joint solutions and multiple objectives been sufficiently considered?
I argue that we should take the opportunity and instead promote forestry with a broad and inclusive perspective. At CIFOR, we plan to play a leading role in this process and in the redefinition of forestry to be better integrated with the broader development agenda and global processes, such as SDGs and the UNFCCC, which over the next 15 months hopes to find agreement on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.
Related to this, I have an additional reflection. Climate appears in cluster 5 and is not linked either to ecosystems or sustainable agriculture. Landscapes, however, are the source of one-third of emissions and the most affected by climate change, so there is a risk of missing some important points here, just as agriculture is kept out of the UNFCCC negotiations.
UN-NGLS: In your recent article in The Guardian on the role of forests in the SDGs, you stated that forests are critical to achieving several sustainable development goals. Could you outline the elements of a cross-cutting approach to forests and forestry for the SDGs?
Peter Holmgren: Forestry is an economic sector with its defined resource management and use, products and trade, as well as institutional framework. The SDGs, however they are configured, will not change that, as SDGs will not be intended to change other sector setups. However, the SDGs offer a new way of profiling forestry across the full range of development aspirations. This is best done within a landscape approach where the agriculture, forestry and other land-based sectors can establish ways of working together and set combined targets and performance measures. This will be a more effective way of approaching the SDGs because (a) many targets and measures will be similar across the land-based sectors and a commons set of landscape aspirations will be a better political sell; (b) we will avoid a dichotomization and competition between the sectors, as we see today; and (c) a planet with healthy landscapes is a very compelling political idea that can be picked up at the highest levels as it contributes to SDGs.
UN-NGLS: CIFOR has called for a goal on sustainable landscapes. Could you describe the key elements of such a goal?
Peter Holmgren:A goal on sustainable landscapes in the SDG process provides an opportunity to step forward and raise the bar for the sector’s contributions by taking a broader view of the issues. This means that countries as a whole (or any other jurisdictional level) are also landscapes, which is relevant for the SDG framework, as progress needs to be reported by country.
Below are some possible indicators to consider:
A. Basic landscape indicators that can be applied on all scales:
1. Improved landscape livelihoods, measured as farmer/producer income or assets;
2. Improved ecosystem services, measured as biomass stock in the landscape (including forest and soils);
3. Improved resource efficiency in land use, measured as greenhouse gas emissions from land-based sectors;
4. Improved supply of food and other products from land use, measured as quantity or value by category (here the value of forest products can be a sectoral sub-indicator);
5. Improved biodiversity potential, measured, for example, as forest area by ecological type.
Each of these suggested five indicators is both measurable and scalable to any type or size of landscapes. They can be applied universally across developed and developing countries.
B. Indicators related to governance of the landscape:
1. Progress in implementation of, or alignment with, the Voluntary Guidelines on Responsible Governance of Tenure (endorsed by the Committee on World Food Security in 2012), measures TBD;
2. Existence/implementation of legal frameworks that are conducive to cross-sectoral collaboration and policies at the landscape level, measures TBD;
3. Progress in implementation of international agreements on labour and employment in the forestry and agriculture sectors, with special reference to gender and child labor, measures TBD;
4. Level of investments targeted to sustainable land use, measured in monetary terms.
Beyond indicators, another crucial discussion is about what the universal targets should be. Targets can help measure progress and provide guidelines toward the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals. This includes the question of which makes the most sense — absolute targets or relative targets.
Not only looking at landscapes per se, there are additional factors that influence landscapes and the planet indirectly, such as trade and consumption patterns. Further, the primary development issues of poverty, food security and nutrition (mainly beyond agriculture production as such) and health are of course fundamental for people in the world’s landscapes. It is assumed for the purposes of this discussion that other SDGs will cover factors such as these.
