Side event: “Mountain Forest Landscapes for Resilient Societies in Africa, Asia and  Latin America”

The Andean Forests Program together with the ASEAN Social Forestry Network, African Forest Forum and the Global Program on Climate Change of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation organized a joint session during the COP 21 at the Peru Pavilion December 8th 2015.

The session consisted of four presentations from Asia, Africa and Latin America followed by a participant’s dialogue.

From Latin America presentations were given that highlighted the need and importance for sustainable management of mountain forest landscapes for resilience of ecosystem services that benefit people both at local and national level.

Key to this is good knowledge management on filling existing knowledge gaps but also to make accessible current scientific information and validated knowledge of existing local and sub national practices that are promising to bring them to scale together with adequate policies.

Also an excellent experience from Vietnam on a mechanism already put to practice for payment of environmental services (in particular water for hydropower) that has proven an opportunity for increasing income of mountain forest communities and sustainable forest development.

From Africa the findings of a study were shared on an assessment of climate change related to challenges on mountain forests and response mechanisms that could enhance livelihood and provision of ecosystem services in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The presentations can be downloaded from www.bosquesandinos.org (as from next week)

The participants dialogue resulted in the expressed need to join forces across the continents with the aim to bolster a solid and clear voice at the international table to position mountain forest landscapes in the international Climate Change and Sustainable Development policies and scientific debates. Therefor it has been suggested that the African Forest Forum, the ASEAN Social Forestry Network and the Andean Forests Program develop a specific action plan for 2016 for both research findings as well as proposals that will foster sustainable and resilient Mountain Forest Landscape management across Africa, Asia and Latin America. The findings should be presented in international forums like the UNFCCC COP22 (Marrakesh, Morocco) and or the Mountain Conference (Mbale, Uganda).