Are There Practical Solutions for REDD+ and Development?

The above video is great 6 minute synopsis of the core issues and challenges facing REDD+ implementation. REDD+ is a well intentioned programme that is meeting the realities of carbon market trading. How it plays out remains to be seen and remaining objective is important. Thanks to our 3BL colleague Charlotte O'Brien for passing this along. 

The linkage disconnect between REDD+ and CSR/3BL remains the failure to include economy, development and poverty elimination into the dialogue. This is not to say that REDD+ should become a multi-prong initiative, it shouldn't. What it should serve to do is act as an incentive tool for a multi-prong appraoch of conservation, economic development and land-ethics. The video envisions a 'happy ending' that includes the 'quaint' forest peoples moving back into the jungle and building their rough hewn mud-brick huts, leaning on a rake. This is some serious outsider bias. Perhaps because of ELF's on- the- ground experience in creating and developing economies in developing countries, tribals tend to want sustainable economy beyond subsistence hunting gathering. The Seven Sisters of India's North East view themselves as a suzeain greatly due to a deep resentment related to being left out of the India Story. 

The good news is that right now there are tried and true solutions that deliver a better 'happy ending'.  Through the implementation of caringly crafted three-bottom-line economic models and strategies to resolve the forest- development conundrum. Future articles here will discuss the amazing synergy systems and feedback loops that occur when economic models take into account land and people. It's the type of stuff that will make corporate-government and NGO annual integrated reporting an exciting exercise.  

For example, the integration of hi-perf NTFP products manufacture is an often overlooked economic driver that most community forest peoples embrace but simply never have access. A new breed of professional service providers - such as PGI's EcoLogical Fox Charette creates, facilitates and mediates the  trilateral private-public-ngo coalitions required to give 3BL REDD+ projects wings.

In our next installment we will explore the fundamentals of the 'curious coalition' aka public-private-partnerships, and how multi-billion dollar sustainable economies are just waiting to happen. They simply need guidance from expert hands familar with the components, stakeholder issues and modes of facility. There are literally scores of communities in global forests that are yearning for development. This major development and poverty crisis (agreed to in Rio+20 as the global priority) can be resolved at the same time as we repair ecosystems and make forests the living thriving biotic natural capital resource engines they used to be.  

If you are a Government, Corporation or NGO and would like to discuss organizing a 3BL/CSR charette for your organization-programme, please contact us at frank@peerlessgreen.net

Best,

Frank

Forests: A Triple Bottom Line Call to Action

Frances Seymour, Director General

Center for International Forest Research
(CIFOR)
Sindangbarang, Bogor, 16115 Indonesia

His Royal Highness
The Prince of Wales’s Accounting for Sustainability Project
The International Integrated Reporting Council
The Green Economy Coalition and Stakeholder Forum

June 18, 2012

Dear Director General Seymour, et al:

Regrettably, I was unable to attend the 8^th Forest Roundtable as planned due to circumstances outside my control. I cannot overemphasize the importance of the Roundtable's agenda. In my opinion there can be no discussion of sustainability unless it begins and ends with the conservation and management of our rapidly vanishing global forest resources. In particular, it was the one forum for which I humbly believed my voice carried weight, as I have the ability to say that I am the co-founder of a decade old global business that integrated the use of a historically handicraft raw material -bamboo- and engineered its natural properties into a high performance building material. Over the years, BT has found great value in the ability to market from the U.S. its developing-country Vietnam produced goods as ICC certified; and likewise agrees with CIFOR's position that similar indirect market mechanisms should be scaled up to support and promote demand side regulation for green commodities.

My company -Bamboo Technologies, LLC- is a significant example that 1) consumers will embrace new material buildings when they exude quality, perform and carry genuine green values; 2) that myriad three-bottom-line forest economies -based on non-timber forest product agroforestry- are a viable development model delivering healthy ecosystems and sustainable communities. Add to this REDD+ and a synergistic driver of genuine 3BL economic models is achievable. Coupled with integrated reporting metrics and CSR, the private sector would likely look favorably on finance for REDD+ (which according to CIFOR is an industry with a potential to deliver an additional US $13 billion in resources per annum by 2020.)

For BT, bamboo proved a high performance timber replacement material; a rapidly renewable; a carbon capture device, when caringly produced, can balance emission reduction goals with the well being of forest communities, including their participation, rights and knowledge. The principle of 'caring' production is very much an ethic that connects the raw material to forest to community to business to consumer. A new broadened stakeholder 'profit' paradigm. BT's experience has now led to the promotion of a hybrid cross cutting public private partnership model, that includes government concessional community forest cooperatives managed and monitored by regional and national NGO. This type of relationship building takes time, resources and insight, but it is the type of commitment required of transitional change, and is the check and balance security that private markets and REDD+ will and must require for transparency.

Finally, BT's research and experience has demonstrated that the treatment of forests as 'museums' that remove humankind from the forest natural econ-ecosystem is as unnatural as over-exploitation. A decade of experience and deep investigation of the critical 3BL objectives favor -and arguably cannot realistically exist without market mechanisms and a view that forest economy and products are the clear source of economic growth and poverty reduction for developing countries.

Respectfully Submitted,

/s/
David Elliott Sands
Co-Founder, Bamboo Technologies, LLC
a Rio+20 Forum representative of,
The Peerless Green Initiatives Network
a Global Compact Member

cc:

UNEP, TEEB
UNGC
His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales’s Accounting for Sustainability Project
The International Integrated Reporting Council
The Green Economy Coalition and Stakeholder Forum

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