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You are here: Home1 / agroforestry

Tag Archive for: agroforestry

Enhancing land security: lessons from Côte d’Ivoire and Indonesia

30 November 2022/by Romuald Vaudry

In many parts of the world, Indigenous Peoples and local communities have no legal recognition of their rights over the forest land they live on, despite the fact that when they do, they are better able to conserve it, bringing climate, biodiversity and development benefits.

At COP 26, countries and philanthropic foundations pledged USD 1.7 billion up to the end of 2025 to recognise indigenous and local community land rights. However, while 19% of that pledge has been disbursed in 2022, only 7% has reached local communities and indigenous peoples directly.

At the EU REDD Facility, we have gathered experience in working closely with partners in Côte d’Ivoire and Indonesia to find innovative solutions to enhance local communities’ and smallholders’ legal security over their lands.

A stakeholder mapping exercise with representatives of oil palm smallholders from Bunga Karang Village, Banyuasin District, South Sumatra Province, Indonesia, where EFI and partners support the implementation of social forestry policy.
A stakeholder mapping exercise with representatives of oil palm smallholders from Bunga Karang Village, Banyuasin District, South Sumatra Province, Indonesia, where EFI and partners support the implementation of social forestry policy. Source: WRI Indonesia

Securing land certificates in wooded areas of Côte d’Ivoire

Based on the experience of the REDD+ project in the Mé region of Côte d’Ivoire, the Facility is supporting the delivery of individual or collective land certificates. These certificates are an official recognition of the customary rights over land. The project covers 2500 hectares of wooded areas threatened by agricultural production and logging.

In support to the GIZ programme Forests4Future, these activities also enable:

  • Farmers, especially non-Ivorians, to secure access to land through the signing of lease contracts with land certificate holders.
  • The implementation, with private operators, of innovative rural reforestation or agroforestry models. These models can secure private investments in other people’s land and related benefits, such as timber production and carbon sequestration.
  • To significantly increase rural populations’ resilience by: 
    • Enabling the full reintroduction of trees (and associated benefits) into farming systems when climate change impacts are increasing
    • Securing the activities of vulnerable groups (women and youth), especially those dedicated to harvesting of non-timber forest products 

This approach met the interest of the World Bank, which is integrating the lessons learnt from this ongoing pilot into a new major project dedicated to the free delivery of land certificates in 16 regions of Côte d’Ivoire, with a focus on wooded areas and women’s access to these certificates. Given the affordable cost related to this operation (EUR 20 per hectare), this new approach could also be extended through public-private partnerships involving cocoa and timber stakeholders.

Marker installed to delimitate the boundaries of an agroforest in the Mé region in Côte d’Ivoire
Marker installed to delimitate the boundaries of an agroforest in the Mé region in Côte d’Ivoire. Source: J. Kouao

Analysing the legal basis for customary forestry in Indonesia

Over the past decade, decentralisation and reformation efforts in Indonesia have increased the role of communities in forest management, in which land tenure plays an important role. The Social Forestry policy aims to redistribute 12.7 million ha (around 10%) of state forest area to local communities through several mechanisms.

Along with partners in Indonesia, the EU REDD Facility conducted several analyses of the Indonesian legal framework concerning land tenure, particularly in relation to customary forestry. For example, we assessed whether the legal framework enables customary and indigenous groups to be involved in legal and sustainable production and trade of timber from their customary forests, especially because some of them rely on logging and the timber trade to support their livelihoods.

Recently, we analysed changes brought about by the issuance of the sweeping Job Creation Law and its impacts on indigenous or customary peoples’ rights. This analysis suggests that the Job Creation Law generally strengthens the status of social forestry and provides an affirmative policy for indigenous communities. Nonetheless, it has not simplified the procedures that customary communities must follow when applying for official recognition of their customary forests.

The Facility is also supporting the implementation of the Indonesian Government’s social forestry policy through support to a group of oil palm smallholders in South Sumatra currently applying for a social forestry permit. The policy provides groups of farmers with secure tenure permits to continue farming on state protection forest land, provided that they switch from oil palm monoculture to agroforestry within one plantation cycle, to restore the area. The Facility’s Land-use Planner tool will be used to support the smallholders in identifying their agroforestry options.

Local land tenure for global benefits

These are examples of how work on improved land tenure can have benefits that go far beyond those to the local communities and environment. You can read more about how tenure security helps address climate change, conserve biodiversity and advance sustainable development in our related blog post “Securing land rights: one stone, three birds”.

Alice Bisiaux

Alice leads the EU REDD Facility’s legal work on land allocation and forest conversion. She also provides technical support on the national climate plans of the Facility’s partner countries.

Before joining the Facility, Alice worked as an environmental lawyer in London. She then followed the international climate change negotiations for over ten years, and consulted for various international NGOs and the United Nations. Alice teaches climate change negotiations at ESADE University in Barcelona.

Satrio Adi Wicaksono

Satrio Adi Wicaksono

Satrio provides technical and analytical support for the Facility’s work on forest and land use governance in Southeast Asia. He is based in the European Forest Institute’s office in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Satrio previously worked on forest and ocean issues at World Resources Institute Indonesia, where he managed projects and conducted research on forest and landscape restoration, social forestry, and sustainable ocean and coastal ecosystems. He has a background in climate science, environmental studies, and international relations.

https://euredd.efi.int/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/stakeholder-mapping-excercise-oil-palm-smallholders-Sumatra-Indonesia.jpg 628 1200 Romuald Vaudry https://euredd.efi.int/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/EU-REDD-Facility-logo-tagline.svg Romuald Vaudry2022-11-30 11:46:482022-11-30 14:06:04Enhancing land security: lessons from Côte d’Ivoire and Indonesia

Latest blog posts

  • A stakeholder mapping exercise with representatives of oil palm smallholders from Bunga Karang Village, Banyuasin District, South Sumatra Province, Indonesia, where EFI and partners support the implementation of social forestry policy.WRI IndonesiaEnhancing land security: lessons from Côte d’Ivoire and Indonesia30 November 2022 - 11:46 am

    In many parts of the world, Indigenous Peoples and local communities have no legal recognition of their rights over the forest land they live on. At the EU REDD Facility, we have gathered experience in Côte d’Ivoire and Indonesia to find innovative solutions to enhance local communities’ and smallholders’ legal security over their lands.

  • Ivorian couple holds their land certificateNitidaeSecuring land rights: one stone, three birds30 November 2022 - 10:58 am

    Land tenure insecurity is a key driver of deforestation and land degradation. In contrast, tenure security comes with significant climate, biodiversity and development benefits: three birds with one stone. However, when looking at the national climate plans of major forest countries, more could be done to foster the securing of land rights.

  • Palm oil plantations in IndonesiaSatrio Wicaksono, EFITraining land-use planners for sustainable landscapes13 July 2022 - 5:59 pm

    Landscapes around the world have experienced dramatic transformations in recent decades. Global supply chains link smallholder palm oil farmers in Indonesia with major retailers, like Lidl, Carrefour and Tesco, in Europe or cocoa growers in Ghana to chocolatiers in Belgium. The growing population of our globalised world has intensified pressure on land, soils, water and forests. Ensuring the health of these ecosystems is essential to address climate change, biodiversity loss and land degradation to achieve sustainable development.

  • Reducing the bitterness of coffee from Vietnam’s Central Highlands20 June 2022 - 3:00 pm

    I love coffee in the morning, its taste, its aroma and the boost of energy it gives me to start the day. While enjoying a fresh brew some years ago, I began to think about what was behind my morning cup – where do the beans come from? What are the landscapes where they are produced like? And who are the people that harvest this coffee?

  • Six ingredients of successful partnerships for legal and sustainable forest-risk commodities20 June 2022 - 1:46 pm

    How can we ensure legal and sustainable value chains that unleash local wellbeing and protect forest and biodiversity without excluding smallholders? The answer may be in the mixing of six ingredients to whip up successful multistakeholder partnerships that can support legal and sustainable supply chains of forest-risk commodities.

  • 10 years 10 lessonsSeason’s greetings and 2021 in review31 December 2021 - 4:34 pm

    As 2021 draws to a close, I’d like to take this opportunity to share some highlights from this year’s work by the EU REDD Facility. This year we celebrated the 10th anniversary of our founding, taking the opportunity to reflect on the lessons we learned over the last decade. We’re working to ensure these insights help to shape and accelerate action for protecting and restoring the world’s forests.

About the EU REDD Facility

The EU REDD Facility supports countries in improving land-use governance as part of their efforts to slow, halt and reverse deforestation. It also supports the overall EU effort to reduce its contribution to deforestation in developing countries. The Facility focuses on countries that are engaged in REDD+, an international mechanism that incentivises developing countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from their forest and land-use sectors. The Facility is hosted by the European Forest Institute and was established in 2010.

Disclaimer

This website has been produced with the assistance of the European Union and the Governments Germany, Ireland and the Netherlands. The contents of this site are the sole responsibility of the European Forest Institute’s EU REDD Facility and can under no circumstances be regarded as reflecting the position of funding organisations.

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Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0. Credit information: European Forest Institute, www.efi.int
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