Day 1 reflection - Regional Sharing Workshop on Assessment of Challenges and Opportunities in the Asia Pacific region for Rio+20

Dear Colleagues,

As you are aware we are hosting the ‘Regional Sharing Workshop on Assessment of Challenges and Opportunities in the Asia Pacific region for Rio+20, 23-25 August 2011’ at ICIMOD headquarters with the objective of collecting, validating, synthesizing, distilling and packaging attractively HKH and AP regional input on sustainable mountain development in the context of Rio +20 preparatory works coordinated by the Mountain Partnership Consortium (MPC), of whose we act as the HKH and AP focal point.

Please find below highlights of the ‘DAY 1’ of the event, prepared with generous contribution from our Rapporteurs Ujol Sherchan and Aneeta Gauchan. We are trying to keep you updated as things evolve on social networks. Pls check http://twitter.com/#!/apmnicimod (#APRIOPLUS20), https://www.facebook.com/APY.Rioplus20 and http://mountainasia.blogspot.com/ for more information.

Best,

Tek

On behalf of the Rio +20 core team

 Tek Jung Mahat

APMN Node Manager, Knowledge Management
International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development
GPO Box 3226, Kathmandu, Nepal
Tel +977-1-5003222 Ext 104 Fax +977-1-5003277 Web www.icimod.org
Connect to ICIMOD/APMN:      

¾¾¾¾¾¾¾¾¾¾¾¾¾¾¾¾¾¾¾¾¾¾

Regional Sharing Workshop on Assessment of Challenges and Opportunities in the Asia Pacific region for Rio+20

23-25 August 2011, ICIMOD Headquarters, Kathmandu, Nepal

 Day 1 reflection

A three- day Regional Sharing Workshop on Assessment of Challenges and Opportunities in the Asia Pacific region got underway yesterday 23 August 2011 at ICIMOD Headquarters in Kathmandu, Nepal.

About 40 plus participants from South East Asia, Hindu Kush-Himalayan (HKH) region, and the island nation of Papua New Guinea representing primarily governments, I/NGO sector, and multilateral organisations gathered at ICIMOD to:

•      discuss 15 commissioned case studies - 10 from HKH and 4 from SE Asia and the Pacific  as well as identify good practices;

•      locate “missing links” for prioritizing regional issues; and

•      consolidate specific suggestions on status, challenges, progress and opportunities for sustainable mountain development in the context of Rio+20

Chief Guest, Honorable Dr Dinesh Devkota, Vice Chair, National Planning Commission, Government of Nepal delivered an inaugural speech. He said that the integration of environment and development – and the hoped for synergy - envisioned in Agenda 21 (which came out of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit and later revisited by the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg) has by and large failed to materialize, owing to lack of political and financial commitments by the various state and non-state actors. However, in the lead up to Rio+20 and beyond, he called for ramping up public private partnership at national level and North-South and South-South cooperation at regional and international levels. He also said that Nepal, through a Mountain Alliance of mountainous Least Developed Countries, will lobby in favor of the Global Mountain Agenda and action on climate change at Rio+20.

In his keynote speech, Special Guest Dr RS Tolia, Chair, Central Himalayan Environment Association (CHEA), Nainital, India shared some learning points from his decade long experience with Uttrakhand’s new statehood. He said that once Uttrakhand gained a legal mandate to make its own decisions as a new state, things improved. Political autonomy is important, without it mountain development is just a “pipe dream”. Mountain regions must strive to become “masters of their own destiny”. Political autonomy is a necessary but not sufficient condition for sustainable mountain development. Other things also matter, such as good governance, institution building, financing, and resource mobilization.

Dr. Madhav Karki, Acting Director General of ICIMOD, flagged the need to develop a Green Economy roadmap for the mountains in the lead up to Rio+20 in order to address challenges associated with climate change and globalization as well as to seize emerging opportunities such as those presented by growing mountain tourism potential, payments for ecosystem services (PES), REDD+, and clean development mechanism (CDM) to reward mountain communities for their stewardship of ecosystems. This calls for new global policies, institutional framework and financing tailored to the mountain context to be taken up at Rio+20.

At a South East Asia and Pacific session on Case studies and Discussions chaired by Dr. Ramon Razal, the following presentations were made, each followed by a question and answer session:

·         Indonesia: “Improving the welfare of the local community and FOREST CONSERVATION through forest honey BEE”, presenter Hermanto,   Indonesia Forest Honey Network (JMHI)

·         Philippines: “Community Management of Resources: the Ikalahan Experience”, presenter Delbert Rice, the Kalahan Education Foundation, Inc.

·         Papua New Guinea: “The Managalas Plateau Conservation Area Project, Oro Province, PNG” , presenter Rufus Mahuru, Programme Manager

·         Vietnam: “Collaborative Forest Management in Bidoup Nui Ba National Park, Lam Dong Province” , presenter Tek Jung Mahat on behalf of the Vietnamese case study writers

Co-chair Amulya Tuladhar summarized the session. He underscored the need to scale up good initiatives from SE Asia and Pacific to sub-national and national levels and beyond.  Since the legal regime of the Phillippines allows for the Ikahalan experience through granting of Ancestral Domain Title, this has the potential for expansion. Intermediary organisaitons can contribute to that expansion. In the case of Papua New Guinea, mining companies are already eyeing tribal property such as the Managalas Plateau.

Networking with national and international legal scholars working on indigenous rights and conservation can allow the tribes to develop at their own calibrated pace and counter external threats. That South East Asia and the Pacific are rich in tropical areas and rainforests bespeaks of their ecological resilience. Unlike North and South Americas, this region has witnessed a shorter period of outside interference. With globalization and technologies, outside actors will come in.  That is a trend. How to work in partnership with outside actors or coexist with them will be a challenge for tribes practicising their traditional way of life in the coming years.

Likewise at a Hindu Kush Himalayan Session I on Case Studies and Discussions chaired by Jay Raj, the following presentations were made, each followed by a question and answer session:

§  India: “Mountain Biodiversity and Livelihoods at Rio+20: A Case Study of Herbal Sector in Uttarakhand” , presenter G. S. Rawat

§  India: “Organic Uttarakhand: Subsistence to Sustainability”, presenter Binita Shah

§  India: Van Panchayats of Uttarakhand: An Institutional Framework for  Sustainable Development  , presenter Dr. Rajendra Singh , Conservator of  Forests, Western Circle, Nainital, Uttarakhand (India)

§  India: “Securing Livelihoods and Natural Resource Management through empowerment of communities: A case study of NERCORMP from North East India”, presenter Dhrupad Chaudhury

§  India: “Money grows on trees” Presenter Sudhirendar Sharma

Co-chair Sudhirendar Sharma summarized the Hindu Kush Himalayan Session I by saying that it is not clear how to convince policy and decision makers with isolated case studies. As there is a big ndisconnect between micro and macro views, big picture is still missing.  It is not sure how projected gains and impacts of documented projects and programmes have translated into gains for individual households.  The case study on CDM in Uttarakhand offers potential, there is a need for advocacy and action to realize gains from CDM. While “Organisc Uttarakhand” fits into three pillars of SMD – social, economic and environmental - there is some paradox at play here: how do you recoincile subsidization of chemical-fertilizers with the push toward “organic”?  Creating organic zones with tax rebates and tax holidays can really accelerate the move toward organic. It is not clear how to deal with the feminization of mountain agriculture,  what this will mean in terms of policies, in terms of programmes. “Elite capture” and “male capture” continue to be challenges for gender equity and pro poor and inclusive development and participatory approaches.  Over the next two days we need to come up with recommendations to address these problems that we can take to Rio+20.

The workshop is expected to result in:

•      Collation of diverse perspectives  to improve 15 commissioned case studies – 10 from HKH and 5 from SE Asia and Papua New Guinea - from policy perspectives as well as validate identified good practices; and

•      Framing of key messages and recommendations from the Asia Pacific Region in the Regional Assessment for feeding into the Rio+20 preparatory process.

Regional Sharing Workshop on Assessment of Challenges and Opportunities in the Asia Pacific region for Rio +20, 23-25 August 2011

Vision for Rio+20: Revisiting the Sustainable Mountain Development Agenda from Asia Pacific Mountain Perspectives

Bringing local, national, and regional perspectives to the table

Background

Twenty years after the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in 1992, also popularly known as the Rio Conference or Earth Summit, the world community is convening another important meeting, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD), also to be held in Rio, from 4-6 June 2012. The conference, dubbed ‘Rio+20’, is expected to do serious stocktaking of the progress made, experiences gained, and unfulfilled commitments in implementing various programmes and initiatives since the 1992 conference. It will focus on lessons learned and emerging opportunities, which will help in developing a roadmap for the future to ensure that human civilisation is preserved and human beings learn to live in harmony with nature and with each other.

Although the earlier Rio meeting formally recognised the significance of sustainable mountain development (SMD) in the environment and sustainability debate, through the inclusion of Chapter 13 in its Agenda 21, it is increasingly realised that little has been achieved in this area. Accordingly the members of the Mountain Partnership Consortium (MPC), the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), and the Swiss Federal Office for Spatial Development (ARE) are together developing a state-of-art review report on SMD challenges and opportunities in mountains and global policy briefs which will be shared with the participants at Rio+20. Selected MPC members working in different regions are tasked with developing regional assessment reports as the basis for developing these global reports and briefs; these regional reports will be presented at the Global Conference on Sustainable Mountain Development: Challenges and Opportunities for Rio+20, to be held in Lucerne, Switzerland in October 2011.

Rio+20 preparations in the Hindu Kush-Himalayas and the Asia Pacific region

The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), as a member of the Mountain Partnership Consortium (MPC), has been assigned the task of preparing a regional assessment report on SMD in the Hindu Kush-Himalayas (HKH) and the Asia Pacific region, with the following objectives:

• to take stock of what has, and what has not, been achieved in promoting sustainable mountain development since 1992 in different parts of the region;
• to learn what has worked and what has not – and why;
• to identify current and future challenges in the HKH mountain context and to explore pathways and opportunities for addressing these; and
• to identify the role of different stakeholders and propose a plan of work for preparing a draft regional report by September 2011.

Process and progress

Started in early 2011 in the Asia Pacific region, this preparatory process is managed by ICIMOD together with partner organisations and individual experts contributing to SMD process in the region. An MPC meeting in February 2011 outlined the structure of the global as well as regional assessment reports, identified lead partners, and defined the process. Following guiding documents and inputs received from MPC, ICIMOD together with the partners organised three virtual debates (email and web based), focused on the HKH (April 2011, 200 contributions, 296 participants), on South and Central Asia (May 2011, 550 participants, 400 contributions), and on Southeast Asia (June 2011, more than 160 participants), which were warmly welcomed by SMD communities across the region with an exceptionally high number of participants and extremely valuable contributions.

In addition, a few experts from HKH countries and Southeast Asia have been identified to prepare case studies on relevant themes (such as governance for natural resource management, forestry, biodiversity conservation, biogas, and watershed management), showing the progress made in the past couple of decades and developing the way forward. 

Purpose of the workshop

The information collected through the above process will be further discussed, critically assessed, and refined during the Regional Sharing Workshop on Assessment of Potentials and Opportunities in the Asia Pacific Region for Rio+20, to be held at ICIMOD from 23 to 25 August 2011. The workshop will bring together around 40 experts from the Asia Pacific region, including the case study developers, active contributors to the virtual debates, government authorities, and representatives of major groups, international and UN agencies, and donor communities, to:

• discuss and refine the case studies, virtual debate syntheses, and draft regional report prepared for the workshop;
• identify good practices and missing links;
• prioritise environmental issues in the region, and collect and consolidate issue-specific suggestions;
• finalise the content and shape of the regional assessment report; and 
• facilitate sharing of SMD-relevant information and knowledge in the region and promote regional cooperation.

Expected Outputs of the Workshop

• Wide sharing, extensive discussion and rigorous validation of information and knowledge on SMD in the context of Rio+20, including validation of facts and figures
• Regional priorities and recommendations to include in the final regional assessment report;
• Formation of a responsive subgroup of people with good awareness of SMD, Chapter 13, and Rio +20 who are committed to contribute to the process

Venue: ICIMOD Headquarters, Kathmandu Nepal

ICIMOD web: http://www.icimod.org/?q=3863

For further information

Dr Madhav Karki, Deputy Director General, ICIMOD, and 

Team Leader, Regional Assessment for Rio+20 in HKH and Asia Pacific Mountain region (a Mountain Partnership Consortium global initiative)

Mr Tek Jung Mahat, APMN Node Manager, ICIMOD

Email: tmahat@icimod.org

Note: Participation in this workshop is by invitation only.