Launching UN-REDD in Indonesia

With the traditional ringing of the gong by Minister of Forestry H.E. Zulkifli Hasan, Indonesia's UN-REDD National Programme is underway. UN Indonesia Resident Coordinator El-Mostafa Benlamlih (second from left) and Norwegian Ambassador to Indonesia H.E., Eivend S. Homme, (second from right) look on.

A launch. An inception. A kick-off. Call it what you will, Indonesia's UN-REDD National Programme is now underway.

The 18-month programme aims to: (1) strengthen multi-stakeholder participation and consensus at national level; (2) demonstrate systems for defining reference emission levels (REL), monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) and fair payments, and (3) establish capacity to implement REDD at decentralized levels, including pilot work to be undertaken on the island of Sulawesi.

The Inception Workshop began with a series of opening speeches by the three gentlement shown and named in the picture above (apologies for not knowing the names of the other two people shown), as well a speech by Ms. Ammanda Katili of the Dewan Nasional Perubahan Iklim, or National Council on Climate Change.  Links to the complete agenda, as well as to other documents related to the workshop and the UN-REDD programme, are available here, at the Ministry of Forestry website.

One of the presentations delivered during the afternoon, by Tomoyuki Uno, a Junior Professional Officer at UNDP Indonesia, was on the topic of "Consultation with Communities and FPIC in Indonesia."  The relationship between REDD as a whole and local communities is a relatively controversial one. While many argue that REDD represents a unique opportunity for forest-dependent communities to benefit financially from the natural wealth that they have helped to sustain, in many cases for centuries, others are notably less sanguine about these communities having to bargain over resource rights with people who some would consider to be unscrupulous speculators. Tomoyuki explained to the audience UN-REDD's current policy with respect to local communities and particularly its operational guidance on the engagement of indigenous and forest-dependent peoples. He also described the Indonesia programme's proposed approach to this issue, and to the issue of 'Free and Prior Informed Consent.' I will be discussing these issues at greater length in an upcoming post for the UN-REDD newsletter ( to be linked to at a later date).