The Capacity Development Workshop held on Monday February 19th, was led by the International Forestry Student Association (IFSA), the Global Landscapes Forum (GLF) and the Collaborative Partnership on Forests (CPF) and trained 50 international Youth delegates on accelerating efforts to halt deforestation. Furthermore, Youth proposals were collected for later High Level UN Political Agendas.

Halting or not halting deforestation, that is the question

Forests are our best asset to combat climate change and they are key in securing food, water and ecosystem services for mankind survival. Despite of their fundamental role to sustain life on this planet, we keep on losing them at terrifying annual rates.

With the current rate of deforestation, there will be no forests left within the next 100 years.

Given that deforestation is in the eyes of a conservationist an ecological tragedy and in the eyes of the investor a money-making opportunity, we need to reconcile these opposing interests.

Youth ideas feed UN Plan for Forests

In order to contribute to and accelerate global forest goals and SDGs, the workshop in the morning of February 19th led by Wageningen University (Netherlands) collected Youth proposals for the Halting Deforestation Conference (CPF). Discussions went about how to have an integrated management of lands at the landscape level: where different actors of society, different land use types and different instutional frameworks are best combined to ensure forests protection and sustainable management.

Desmitifying Gender in Forest Conservation Efforts

After the morning session on the Landscape approach, the noon session led by Taylor Tondelli (FAO) touched with the Youth delegates on the importance of mainstreaming gender in efforts to halt deforestation. To see, what we did exactly, check out the video below.

I found this group dynamic to be extremely mind-opening. Participants had assigned roles. We were all standing in one single line and as Ms. Tondelli would read statements we had to give either a step forward (yes) or backwards (no), depending on whether read power statements matched our roles. Example: one would give a step forward if in the role of a woman community leader one would have “political influence on the community” or a step backwards if “at night one wouldn’t feel secure to walk alone”. At the end of this power dynamic, assigned roles revealed high assymetries in power distribution across different societal actors.

Make our voices heard

Throughout the Capacity Development Workshop Youth delegates worked on global proposals to halt deforestation: ideas ranged from experimental urban jungles, to mainstreaming deforestation through comedy and art and music for collective awareness.

All Youth proposals were collected in the afternoon session by IFSA and GLF Sponsored Youth in Landscapes delegates. Youth Proposals to halt deforestation will contribute to the UN Strategic Plan for Forests 2017 – 2030 and will be presented at the 13th Session of the UN Forum on Forests this May.

Finally, selected Youth delegates prepared online content for the IFSA short course on Halting Deforestation. You can see here, what the results of these hours working on solutions are.

Quick links

IFSA Short course on deforestation Check out now (!)

Halting Deforestation Conference

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Organised by CARE International (Sven Harmeling), Center for International Environmental Law – CIEL (Sebastian Duyck), Women’s Environment and Development Organization – WEDO (Bridget Burns)

The Guaranteeing Rights & Gender Equality side event, organized by CARE International, invited a panel of four speakers to debate about human rights as well as gender implications and action strategies for including these priorities within the achievement of Paris goals.

The first to introduce her perspective on the issue was Noelene Nabuliron from Fiji. She saw potential in relying on increasing transparency and accountability to track progress towards equity. Communications, as an essential part for reporting on indices of transformation, were proposed by her.

“With all these strategies, the process would also have to placed in the wider context of a country’s culture and tradition, to understand deviations among nations.”
– Noelene Nabuliron from Fiji

She rounded off her speech by highlighting current problems, such as work of women that is not accounted for, the underlying systemic injustice, and the excessive and extractive production and consumption as major causes of inequality. She concluded with: “Nothing about us, without us.”

Her speech was followed by that of Sebastian Duych from the Center for International Environmental Law, who shifted the focus to the human rights legal perspective. The preamble of the Paris Agreement, he pointed out, can be seen as a very inspiring underlying message. Therefore, he pleaded to ensure that the spirit of the preamble should serve to influence all enforcement mechanisms when discussed during the negotiations and not just the technicalities.

Duych likewise urged states to inform about their status quo on equity at the community level. As a concluding remark, he stressed that only with an advancement of obligations toward including concrete measures to ensure human rights could real progress be expected.

After him, Bridget Burns from the Women’s Environment and Development Organization took the microphone and elaborated on the status of gender and the Paris Agreement. She proposed that gender should not only include women, but also all other sexes. With that she also stressed the recession of development in engagement of women in delegations and the disparity between policy and practice.

Five main claims were brought forward by Burns:
1. Gender responsive climate policy
2. More sex and gender disaggregated data and analysis
3. Meet goal of gender balance
4. 100% gender-responsive climate finance
5. Financing the gender action plan.

She underpinned her speech with the statement : “No gender equality on a dead planet.”

Lastly, “CARE International” closed off the session with a perspective on agriculture and women’s roles, which is not treated with adequate recognition at present. Land ownership and extreme events are striking the most vulnerable the hardest.

All in all, the side event was very helpful in filtering concrete actions and procedures out of the Paris Agreement. Besides the will to do something about inequalities in the world, all speakers demanded increasing action and a shift in focus on concrete plans. The “Gender Action Plan” can only be a first step in the right direction.

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