Report from the climate change conference 2008

Poznań, Poland, 10 December 2008. This December ICRAF and the ASB Partnership for the Tropical Forest Margins, attended the 14th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC-COP14) held in Poznań, Poland. With over 9,000 delegates, the conference it was an exciting opportunity to showcase our research, debate ideas, and meet scientists and decision-makers from all over the world. ICRAF and ASB scientists also attended high level session with negotiators to try to influence the process to include consideration for avoiding emissions from deforestation and agroforestry-based land use change.
The ICRAF and ASB delegations were there to present research on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD), which was a principal agenda item at the conference. ASB recently published two new policybriefs on the opportunity costs avoiding emissions from deforestation and REDD Strategies for High Carbon Rural Development. The first brief takes a bottom-up perspective on the economic opportunities that farmers give up to reduce emissions from deforestation. The second brief describes how carbon-rich agroforestry systems can help poor farmers benefit from global carbon markets and enhance the effectiveness of strategies to reduce emissions from deforestation.
On December 5, ICRAF hosted a successful side event to the COP on REDD Strategies for High Carbon Rural Development, which brought together scientists from across the ASB consortium including Jim Gockowski (Sustainable Tree Crops Program/IITA - Cameroon), Meine van Noordwijk (ICRAF-Southeast Asia), and Brent Swallow and Peter Minang (ASB), as well as outside perspectives from Charles Erhart (Care international), Peter Holmgren (FAO/UN-REDD) and Benoit Bosquet (World Bank Forest Carbon Partnership Facility). More than 100 people attended the event and our research generated significant interest, particularly because most REDD discussions leave out agriculture and other land uses, and options for the rural poor.
On 6 December, ASB and its partners participated in Forest Day 2, convened by CIFOR and hosted by the collaborative partnership on forests, of which ICRAF is a member. ICRAF Director General Dennis Garrity spoke in the session on adaptation of forests to climate change, about the importance of going beyond REDD to consider a landscape-level approach that integrates agriculture and forestry systems. Dr. Garrity also spoke in the closing plenary alongside distinguished guests that included Yvo de Boer, Executive Secretary of the UNFCC.
At Forest Day, ASB also co-hostsed a side event with the Macauley Land Use Research Institute on "Avoided Deforestation with Sustainable Benefits: bottom-up approaches to measurement and policy change". The event described our research on the Opportunity Costs of Avoiding Emissions from Deforestation and also presented the upcoming collaborative project with the Macauley Institute, "REDD-Alert"
The outcome of this year's UNFCCC conference will indicate whether there is hope that emissions from deforestation will be included under a global agreement once the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012. ICRAF and ASB hope that an agreement will not only include REDD but also emissions from other land use changes, and a mechanism will be developed that rewards smallholder farmers for maintaining high carbon stocks on their land, using agroforestry systems.All presentations and materials can be downloaded at http://www.asb.cgiar.org