CFS Meeting on Sustainable Forestry for Food Security and Nutrition – 17 September 2019
- CSM Key points to the event!
- Video of the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Hilal Elver
- Presentation by Dr. Bambang Supriyanto, Director General of Social Forestry and Environmental Partnership, Indonesia
- Presentation by CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA)
The CFS Event that will take place on 17 September 2019 was strongly requested by the CSM when the CFS Policy Recommendations on Sustainable Forestry for Food Security and Nutrition were endorsed after a policy convergence process in October 2017. CSM Working Group felt that not enough time was dedicated, during the policy debates and negotiation process, to the impact on Right to Food and FSN of tree plantations. CSM highlighted that plantations should not be considered as Forests as their impact are far from being positive for Forests communities. Read here CSM Statement of October 2017 and here CSM vision that informed CSM positions during the Policy convergence process.
Two years after the endorsement of CFS Policy Recommendation this CFS event is finally taking place, even if reduced to a three-hour event, with no interpretation and without any concrete policy outcome of follow-up.
Please find below CFS Concept Note and Agenda of the event.
CFS Concept Note and Agenda
BACKGROUND
The Committee on World Food Security (CFS) at its 44thSession in 2017, endorsed a set of policy recommendations on Sustainable Forestry for Food Security and Nutrition which were elaborated around the main findings of a detailed report of the CFS High-Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE).
These policy recommendations highlight the key role of forests and trees in ensuring food security and nutrition by contributing to dietary quality and diversity, serving as a safety net in periods of food scarcity, generating income for local people, and providing essential ecosystem services for agriculture.
They also note that land degradation and global deforestation, caused mainly by agriculture, driven by increased demand, – adversely impact the environment and ecosystems that ground the livelihoods of indigenous peoples, local communities, and smallholders and agriculture as a whole.
CFS stakeholders thus stressed that sustainable agriculture and food security and nutrition cannot be achieved at the expense of forests, and that actions should be taken to promote better coordination of land use policies and strengthen sustainable management of forests.
Specific attention was paid to the need to strengthen policy coherence across sectors by integrating resilience-enhancing dimensions of forests into agricultural and food security and nutrition programmes and policies.
FOLLOW-UP TO THE CFS POLICY CONVERGENCE PROCESS
The CFS Bureau will convene an open meeting to address issues that were not sufficiently discussed during the policy convergence process, including the relation between commercial plantations and food security and nutrition.
There are numerous definitions of forests that reflect their diversity and the different perceptions of the uses of forests. The HLPE used the definitions of forest and planted forests as per the Forest Resource Assessment (FRA) of FAO. For the FRA, “planted forest” is a “forest predominantly composed of trees established through planting and/or deliberate seeding”[1]. In its report, the HLPE further defined “plantation forests“as those forests planted with a reduced number of tree species, sometimes a single one, often on large areas, mainly to produce wood”. Since the publication of the HLPE report, the FRA has added “plantation forests” as a sub category of planted forests. “Plantation forest”, planted forest that is intensively managed and meet all the following criteria at planting and stand maturity: one or two species, even age class, and regular spacing.
The HLPE has highlighted that plantations provides an important part of wood and pulp and how, given the increasing demand, this contribution is crucial to reduce the need for further exploitation of natural forests. It has also noted that planted forests, including plantations, can contribute to economic development and also, depending on how they are managed and their links to value chains, provide a source of income, employment and economic growth raising the living standards of local communities and contributing to sustainable development. Well-managed planted forests can provide environmental and social services such as rehabilitation of degraded lands, combating desertification, wildlife, soil and water protection, and sequestering and storing of carbon. Demand for renewable products are creating new opportunities for the sector.
Key to such outcomes is to appropriately manage synergies and trade-offs between the various objectives, perspectives and interests.
The CFS meeting will be an opportunity to share views and concrete experiences concerning these topics and to deal with issues related to governance and the need to promote policy coherence across the different sectors dealing with forestry, as well as to discuss the contribution of sustainable forestry to the livelihoods of smallholders and forest-dependent groups.
The meeting will be opened by technical presentations on the perspectives and multifaceted roles and dimensions of plantations with a view to setting the stage for an inclusive and informed discussion on the related challenges and opportunities towards sustainable forest management, including commercial plantations and forest restoration.
The CFS policy recommendations and the related HLPE report will represent the background documents for this event which is intended to stimulate a forward-looking perspective on potential use and implementation of the CFS policy recommendations with reference to the challenges highlighted during the meeting.
AGENDA
The meeting will be moderated by Mr Ronald Hartman, Director, Global Engagement, Partnerships and Resource Mobilization, IFAD.
- Opening remarks by Mr Mario Arvelo, CFS Chair;
- Technical presentation on plantation development and sustainability: Dr Jianchu Xu, Regional Coordinator for East and Central Asia, World Agroforestry (ICRAF);
- Panel discussion:
- Country experience on sustainable plantation development: MrBambang Supriyanto,Director General of Social Forestry and Environmental Partnership of the Ministry of Environment and Forestry of the Republic of Indonesia;
- Perspectives from civil society and indigenous peoples:Mr Rodolfo Gonzalez Greco, Co-Coordinator of the Civil Society Mechanism Working Group on Forestry;
- Role of the private sector toward responsible and sustainable business models: MrMike May,Vice-President, Public Affairs, Futura Gene-Suzano;
- Sustainable plantation management for the realization of the right to food:Ms Hilal Elver, Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food (video message);
- Interventions from the floor and interactive discussion with the panel;
- Concluding remarks by the CFS Chair.