The Governments of Myanmar and Finland today launched a trailblazing project designed to allow for monitoring of forests in a manner that is sensitive to local conflicts and protects human rights. The five-year project will be led by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) thanks to a EUR 8 million endowment from the Government of Finland, a consistent partner in the promotion of environmental sustainability. The project is innovative in taking a conflict sensitive and human rights-based approach to forest monitoring. This has global relevance as it will provide insights into how to bolster sustainable forests in other fragile countries affected by conflicts that are frequently exacerbated by disputes over tenure and access to natural resources.
“The project is innovative in developing an approach to National Forest Inventory (NFI) in areas with security and conflict issues; a much needed approach with global application. NFI involves the physical measurement of the trees and forest on the ground, which is essential for accurate information on forests, and the corner stone of National Forest Monitoring Systems”, said Julian Fox, FAO’s Team Leader of national forest monitoring. “Accurate forest monitoring is the foundation of natural resource management decision making as well as contributing to global efforts to preserve biodiversity and fight against climate change”, he added. National Forest Monitoring Systems are also essential for evaluating and validating a country’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, an essential step toward enabling a country to obtain result-based payments from REDD+.
The human rights-based scope of the project is anticipated to actively contribute to alleviating conflicts and offer a platform for improving the livelihoods of the country where 70 percent of the population who live in Myanmar’s rural areas and rely on the country’s estimated 29 million hectares of forests for basic needs and service. It also has a special focus on engaging the more than 100 different ethnic groups, each with its own history, culture and language or dialect, who live in the country.
As some of Myanmar’s regions are affected by internal conflicts, the project is designed to be participatory and inclusive, with extensive stakeholder consultations, communications and a grievance procedure that will include minority groups as well as global and national organizations with expertise in human rights and conflict. This will contribute to a do-no-harm approach in development projects related to the country’s natural resources.
FAO is pledging to use the human rights-based approach to forest monitoring developed under this project to craft global guidelines for conflict sensitivity and human rights-based approaches in ecosystem monitoring more broadly around the world.
Source: FAO
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