Leveraging renewable energy interventions for climate change mitigation with community participation

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Leveraging renewable energy interventions for
climate change mitigation with community
participation lessons from evaluation of
sustainable forestry practices in central India
using the criteria and indicators approach

• Yogesh D. Jadhav
• Institute of Professional Education and Research,
  Bhopal, India

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Forestry, livelihoods and climate change

• Indian tropical forests Life support system (400
  million people) (Jadhav, 2003)
• Products from forests
• Non-wood products
• food (seasonal fruits, flowers, roots),
  medicinal plants, fodder, flosses, gums, resins,
  etc.
• sustenance (Safety nets) income generation and
  livelihoods during droughts, by way of
• seasonal employment and trade of NWFPs
• Cultural importance (sacred groves, spiritual
  significance)
• Woody products
• - Small timber for use in farm implements,
  domestic furniture
• Fuelwood collection of dead, dying, diseased
  trees for domestic use
• Trade of artefacts and fuelwood
• Services from forests
• Conservation of soil and water
• Habitat for wild life
• Carbon sequestration and climate change
  mitigation
• Aesthetic value
• Gene banks for conserving genetic diversity
  (incl. biodiversity) for present and future use

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Renewable energy - fuelwood

• Significance
• One of the four basic needs of rural communities
  (others are food, shelter clothing)
• Renewable energy resource
• Traditional practices of collection of dead
  dying and diseased trees
• Policy provisions of using fuelwood by local
  communities National Forest Policy (1988)
• - Forest access and use rights to communities
  The Nistar facility

• Benefits of using fuelwood
• Renewable resource
• Local availability
• User-friendliness local technology
• Ease of access to resource
• Economical and socially acceptable
• Co- benefits
• - carbon sequestration,
• - seasonal livelihoods
• - sustainable development

• Reasons of unsustainable management
• Lack of knowledge of sustainable harvest and
  management
• Wastages
• Improper processing and packaging
• Lack of storage facilities
• Unorganised markets and unpredictable
  consumption patterns

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Fuelwood, carbon management and peoples
participation

• Policy framework
• National Forest Policy (1988) SFM
• The Joint Forest Management resolution (JFM,
  1990)
• Constitution and role of the JFM committees
• FPC Forest Protection Committee,
• VFC Village Forest Committee,
• EDC Eco-development Committee
• Rights, duties and privileges of communities
• - Right to access the resource
• Nistar facility
• Livelihoods
• State-people synergies
• Participatory roles of the state and the
  peoples institutions in sustainable forest
  management (SFM)
• Linkages of SFM and carbon management with
  peoples participation
• The ITTO sponsored project

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ITTO project and SFM

• Background Sustainable Forest Management and the
  UNCED 1992
• Forestry Principles and global forestry
  guidelines
• Roadmap for sustaining global forests
• ITTOs year 2000 objective

• Criteria and Indicators system for SFM
  (sustainable forest management)
• As a tool for monitoring assessment and
  evaluation of forest sustainability
• As an MIS for sustainable forest management
• Ensures adaptability with structural and
  functional coherence
• Verifiable over a period of time

• Globally there are 9 processes for SFM
• Inception of IIFM-ITTO pre-project 1999 (Govt.
  of India, IIFM)
• Full project commenced in year 2001 (implemented
  by IIFM forest
• department of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh
  states)
• Initially 8 Criteria and 43 indicators CI
  of Bhopal-India Process
• Eight project sites were selected (Map)
• Field training programs for communities and
  forest officials
• Participatory development of Criteria and
  Indicators for SFM

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Conceptual framework of the project
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Evolving Peoples Indicators (PI)

• IIFM-ITTO projects base set of criteria and
  indicators
• Sensitisation of communities about the CI
  system (based on the generic set of CI)
• Evolution of peoples indicators through
  participatory processes like
• discussions, knowledge sharing, demonstration
  plots
• Field testing of evolved indicators with
  community participation
• Screening of indicators and setting their
  benchmarks
• Definition and description and of minimum
  acceptable standards of
• indicators
• Refinement of indicators and their aggregation
  with the national level
• generic set of criteria and indicators

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Project impacts

• Through use of CI approaches for sustainable
  forest management and
• regulating the use of fuelwood (renewable
  energy interventions), climate change
• mitigation activities have taken root in the
  forest areas
• Communities have become well-versed in using the
  CI system and are using
• the system for evaluating forestry and climate
  change
• The CI system is now operational in more than
  40 community level institutions
• Sufficient policy support has been gained at the
  state government level towards
• implementing the CI system (inclusion in
  forest working plan code)
• Though the CI was initially meant for
  monitoring forest sustainability, the
• co-benefits accruing from the system (like
  monitoring carbon sequestration,
• environmental services, soil and water
  conservation, etc) seem to outweigh
• the original (forestry) benefits
• Apart from these direct benefits, the rural
  community-level institutions
• are functioning as change agents in the forest
  management regime, and assisting
• in the process of sustainable development in
  the country

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Benefits of using Peoples Indicators (PI) for
evaluating climate change
- Spatio-temporal robustness and site-specificity
of PI - Ease of implementation -
User-friendliness - Use of local knowledge - Cost
effectiveness - Objective verifiability of PI -
Validity of collected information over-time -
Sense of ownership by communities
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The way ahead

• Initiate scaling-up of the successes and
  approaches, extrapolating the methodologies
• to a variety of landscapes and eco-regions
• - Conduct further research on community-based
  climate evaluation systems (CBCEV)
• in the field and corroborate the observations
  using laboratory techniques
• Provide additional funding for setting up of
  more pilot sites in other parts of the world
• for facilitating people-centered initiatives
  and evaluation of climate change
• LEARNINGS
• The study provides an adaptive co-management
  model with demonstrable results
• wherein local communities are using traditional
  knowledge and institutions for
• evaluation of environmental change (incl.
  climate, forests, biodiversity)
• The study also proves that the communities are
  the major drivers for effecting
• sustainable development on-the-ground. It
  accentuates that without community
• participation, any developmental intervention
  is bound to have a limited success
• The study highlights the crucial role of
  partnerships among donor agencies,
• government machinery and peoples institutions
  for catalysing the process of
• forest-based sustainable development
  interventions and climate change mitigation

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(Initial) project sites (back)
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CRITERIA AND INDICATORS of the Bhopal-India
Process (back)