Hanoi- Climate change, although by nature a global phenomenon, will affect poor societies disproportionately. Rising sea levels, along with intensified droughts, floods and storms, are likely to lead to mass migrations, social breakdown and epidemics of hunger and disease that will ultimately threaten the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people, especially in developing countries. Urgent action is required to limit the severity of these impacts of climate change.

The global community has acknowledged that human activity strongly contributes to climate change and that patterns of behaviour therefore need to change now. To this end, the UN Kyoto Protocol sets binding commitments for industrialized countries to reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

At the Bali climate change conference last December, one of the headline achievements was agreement to include Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) in a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.  However, there is still great uncertainty regarding the exact nature of the mechanism and its potential impact on the forestry sector and the rural economy.

Due to the need to clarify the current status of REDD, at the recent Asia Pacific Forestry Week in Hanoi, SNV Asia, in partnership with GTZ and FAO, organized an afternoon session entitled “REDD: Financing options and social implications”.  The session generated a high level of interest among delegates, and they were not disappointed.  “This should have been the plenary session” declared a Malaysian government representative, while an expert from an INGO based in Indonesia found the discussions “highly illuminating…and worrying!”.

The session employed a World Café format with four facilitators leading parallel discussions on separate themes, with participants free to move between them.  The facilitators, from World Bank, Fauna and Flora International, IUCN and SNV Vietnam, each gave short presentations to kick-start the session.  “The World Café format is appropriate for a topic such as REDD” said session co-chair Rob Ukkerman of SNV Asia. “Everyone in the room had questions and concerns and the World Café gave them all a chance to contribute to the learning process.”

The Asia Pacific Forestry Week ran from 21st – 26th April and was the first event of its kind.  It ran parallel to the 22nd session of the Asia Pacific Forestry Commission, one of six regional inter-governmental groupings facilitated by FAO.