Deforestation is linked to activities of various sectors, such as agriculture or mining. At the same time, actors at different levels have an impact on forests: the people that live near them and depend on their goods as well as national governments or multinational corporations. Success of initiatives to tackle deforestation, like REDD+, depends on better understanding these dynamics and making this knowledge accessible. In Indonesia, researchers and policy makers have taken a major step in building such a science-policy partnership.
On 17 February, IIASA, the Indonesian Delivery Unit to the President (UKP4), and the recently created National REDD+ Agency for Indonesia – the first such agency in the world – formally agreed on collaborating for the strategic Tropical Flagship Initiative (TFI).
The formal act was framed by a panel discussion chaired by IIASA Ecosystems Services Management (ESM) Program Director Michael Obersteiner, which was attended by around 70 high-level scientists, diplomats and officials from various Indonesian provinces, Southeast Asian countries as well as Western countries.
In his keynote speech, IIASA Director General and CEO Prof. Dr. Pavel Kabat addressed the unique opportunity for Indonesia and the TFI of drawing upon capacity built at IIASA and the Brazilian partner institutions to support sustainable land use modeling and land use planning (LUP) in Indonesia.
”IIASA is in the unique position to provide the necessary integrated assessment tools that bring together top-down and bottom-up approaches. This is crucial for spatially explicit analysis on multiple layers – global, national and local,” says IIASA ESM Program Deputy Director Florian Kraxner.
The afternoon was devoted to a focused group discussion chaired by IIASA researcher Aline Mosnier. National province-level representatives gave informative insights in land use planning processes and challenges in Indonesia, followed by an open discussion of all participants.
On 18 February, the technical workshop set out the strategies towards effectively integrating IIASA models such as GLOBIOM, G4M and EPIC in the existing local modeling environment. Ideas and suggestions raised during the first day’s discussions were reconsidered and partly integrated in the research plan. All participants concluded that taking into account provincial/national- and global links of REDD+ and LUP-related activities were of utmost importance for the project’s success.
