 Thank you very much Peter and Lou for joining us to mark the occasion of the International Forest Day. I just wanted to highlight that 2015 is a very exciting year for both development and climate change. We're going to be the global community rather is going to be deciding on the new climate agreement framework and we're also going to be deciding on the post-2015 development agenda, the sustainable development goals. So how would you describe the role of forests in these agendas? Forestry is obviously really really important for the development agenda and I think we have an opportunity this year to say that it is not only about environment, forestry can contribute to eliminate poverty, to food security, to prosperity in the green economy, to energy and to water and so on. So I think we really have an opportunity to show that forestry can contribute very broadly to the development challenges. How about yourself Lou? I agree with Peter. Forestry is an economic activity first and foremost and it does contribute significantly to rural livelihoods now. It contributes to sustainable development and as we've seen in the climate change agenda, forestry is one of the areas where the world is actually making progress. Brazil has significantly reduced its deforestation rates and as a result of that Brazil is the country that has done the most to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while other countries have continued to increase their emissions. So I think that it's important for the environmental services that Peter was talking about, for water, for energy and I think it's going to continue to grow in importance. We're seeing, I guess we have what, 1.7 billion people across the planet have no access to electricity. 2.7 billion are using wood fuels and dung in unclean situations so the way they prepare their food, the burning of these fuels is leading to respiratory illnesses. Having forestry come in and support the shift to more sustainable energy sources for rural development for rural people is going to have an impact on women's health, it's going to have an impact on children's health, it's going to have an impact on the ability to do things in these landscapes to support development. How about the RED program? RED program was proposed as the major platform for addressing climate change mitigation in 2005 and 10 years on the implementation hasn't really begun. How would you assess the progress that's been made on RED? The progress on RED, it started off I think very idealistic and very unrealistic. I think there were expectations that would be a low cost, easy win for the climate system and those of us who have been working in tropical forestry for decades really didn't buy that argument and so as the international community has gotten more into development of RED and defining just what is RED and what are the modalities for it to be operational they've come to terms more with the reality that tropical foresters have known about in these landscapes for a long time that there are people who live in the forest, people who depend upon these forests that their concerns need to be addressed, that these rural landscapes are not places that we just set aside like a museum, we actually need to find ways to use them sustainably and so we need to put in place the models that allow us to do that. So I think the real progress has perhaps been at the international to national communities coming to terms with the realities on the ground of what needs to happen in order to make RED truly functional and so we see a shift, there's still this idea that RED is still an objective, it's a goal we want to achieve emissions reductions by reducing deforestation but now I think we have a much more nuanced understanding of just how an international mechanism might actually support that, how international financial resources might be mobilized how technical support might be mobilized to actually achieve that on the ground so I see the world now as poised to begin implementation as I mentioned previously Brazil has had some successes in reducing deforestation there are certain lessons to be learned there although the lessons of Brazil may not apply everywhere in the world I think we're beginning to get more and more experience in Africa we're seeing experiences here in Southeast Asia coming along and we do have demonstration projects at province level, at community level that are moving forward, sometimes in fits and starts some things are not working as well as expected initially but these are all important lessons to be learned so I think if the international community can distill the lessons from these early experiences we can actually see a way forward as to how this is going to play out over the course of the next 15 or 20 years and this really has to be a long-term effort reducing the deforestation and managing tropical landscapes more effectively isn't something that's going to be solved with a little bit of money over the next five years it's going to be a long haul so the fact that we're 10 years into it and we're now coming face to face with reality I think we're now set to see it take off and be more constructive than it could have been I'd like to add to that and say that we are gradually we're increasingly coming to this conclusion that the red objective is great it adds value to forest and forestry in the tropics but it also needs to coexist with a lot of other values and a lot of other benefits from those same forests and therefore we need to always think about multiple objectives, multiple purposes of the forest and the landscapes and I think that's where red is maturing into and we are looking at, first of all, landscapes as a whole but also looking at them as delivering multiple objectives and I would also like to take that to another level and look at the climate change process as a whole and the development, sustainable development goals on the post-2015 process as a whole these have been two tracks that have existed in parallel for quite a long time on the international arena and surprisingly little crossovers have happened over the past decade or so in fact there are reports that say that sustainable development is a co-benefit to achieving the climate objectives and that's a little bit weird but what we can see this year in 2015 is that there is a real opportunity for combining or to see a confluence between these two major international development and climate negotiations so in 2015 hopefully we can see a real combination of the development goals and the climate goals but to what extent is that actually happening? To me it seems like there are these two parallel processes that are interrelated but then they're also quite separate There is the institutional aspect that they have been carried out by themselves for a great deal of years but at the political level I think we can see a lot of efforts at the moment we had a climate summit last September in New York which was at the same time as the UN General Assembly which is also negotiating over the sustainable development goals so we see a great deal of political effort to bring these together and you also hear in climate meetings that now is really the time to put the climate objectives in the context of sustainable development so I think it's happening but it's a process No exactly and we'll be seeing how this unfolds as national priorities are defined as national action plans are put in place so there are action plans already related to climate change and there will be more planning associated with that I think we'll see a planning process and benchmarking processes associated with the SDGs so as we see how countries begin to set their benchmarks and set their objectives and define their indicators I think we'll be able to see these things come together a little more closely they'll begin to realize synergies more and more we're hearing these discussions go beyond ministries of forestry and ministries of environment agriculture is talking about what can be done within the agricultural sector to reduce emissions and improve their sustainability I think some of these pledges that we've seen from the private sector from agribusiness has been extremely useful in moving that sector along that direction more and more in developing countries what's driving some of these emission generating activities in these landscapes is not so much about population but it's about income and how income is changing consumption patterns and this is mediated a lot by these larger agribusiness companies if they're becoming more aware and beginning to make these zero deforestation pledges or these pledges to reduce emissions or reduce their climate footprint to committing to socially responsible actions in the landscapes where they derive their primary materials I think we're seeing things moving in a direction where we're actually going to see these two agendas come closer together and we'll see more synergies I see the zero deforestation efforts and ambitions are really a positive force at the moment but one can't also start asking some questions about that for example what does it actually mean zero deforestation sounds good and it's easy to put on a policy for the private corporations but getting down to the nitty-gritty and figuring out what does it actually mean and how do we verify that the deforestation is actually zero it's not so easy and there's also perhaps a discussion to take that yes zero deforestation would be good but there might also be other measures that are necessary to make sure that we maintain the vitality and diversity of forests and at the same time the productivity of the agriculture landscape so there are different aspects to the zero deforestation challenge to me another issue that I'm quite concerned about is that the concern seems to be about net zero deforestation as opposed to absolute, of course we can't achieve absolutes but then what are some of the trade-offs that we need to consider and does that actually mean that there will be certain practices which will go on as usual being compensated by others that are perhaps different but still the situation isn't particularly amenable to first there is no such thing as net deforestation deforestation is the loss of forests if you want to calculate the net of deforestation and afforestation then that becomes the net forest area change the concept of net deforestation doesn't really exist but it is true that is one of the definitional aspects that is unclear in the current debate I agree and I think we still don't have models we have commitments, these commitments are relatively new what's going to be interesting to see is what do the corporations do to put these in place and the issues are, well they're very real for rural communities if you're going to have a completely traceable supply chain what's going to happen to the small-holder producer they're much more difficult to monitor than large-scale plantations for example and there are already concerns that some of these corporate commitments are going to be pushing these small-scale producers the less wealthy, the less well endowed with land players out of the market so there are some downsides to it that we need to pay attention to if these things are supposed to improve environmental performance but they don't also improve social performance then we're not going in the right direction we're moving away from the objectives of the Sustainable Development Goals which really is about achieving both simultaneously that comes back to the discussion before about it's not only about achieving the climate change mitigation goal it has to be done together with achieving all those other objectives that are expressed by the Sustainable Development and Sustainable Development Goals so that really I think will be one of the biggest discussion items this year and if you look at the small-holder producers that Lou mentions of course they are from the outset in a very disadvantaged situation and they often depend on the corporations for selling their produce and there might be other arrangement in place too so the whole issue of rights for small-holders will be another big item I think in the debate over how to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals one area that we've started to work on here in this context is finance because the access to affordable and fair finance for small-holder producers is something that might help us a long way towards achieving some of the sustainability outcomes that we're after But how do we incentivize the corporate structures or corporations to actually address these social issues? What is the role of governments and civil society organizations in the process? Well, when it comes to serial deforestation it's more a market solution and the question then becomes what is the role of the consumers? I think a lot of the advances we've seen have really been through the stick approach the international NGOs have been holding corporations up for public scrutiny exposing unsustainable practices or unfair practices or environmentally damaging practices this has done a lot to move these corporations along because they care about their image, they care about what the consumer thinks of them and if the consumers are informed and want to improve the performance of their consumption then they're going to demand products that are more environmentally sustainable that are produced in socially responsible ways but again, we're just getting started on this this isn't something that's pervasive or that's happening across all markets in the world we have a lot of markets in emerging economies right now that are not necessarily demanding these environmentally sustainably produced products and so there's a need to educate those consumers there's a need for these markets to actually care about what they're buying and the quality of what they're buying and what's the impact of the production systems that lead to their products so we're seeing I guess largely driven at the moment by western consumption and western consumption preferences but the sustainability is really going to be in the ability to globalize that movement and have other markets that are going to be but the source of increasing demand require the same things from the companies it seems that the civil society has become quite engaged together with the corporate sector particularly on this zero deforestation idea and one thought that I've had is that that's really good it's a positive collaboration but if now both the civil society and the private corporation are sitting together around this objective who will do the monitoring and verification of this commitment that we're talking about and I've seen in the last few weeks only I've seen some new news items coming up that actually there is still deforestation going on but who is done really who should we look to to figure out what's actually happening on the ground if all the stakeholders are sitting together that's a very important question who gets to decide what the numbers are everybody has an interest and now if the interests are aligned there's no oppositional interest then who's going to actually be the skeptic in the room that's going to hold the numbers up to scrutiny another question I had was that why are everybody so happy with zero deforestation all of a sudden because if I was concerned about the forests then perhaps I would like to see negative deforestation to get some of those forests back into a better condition but it seems that zero deforestation from now on is what everybody is looking to you've talked about the role of civil society organizations and also corporations but what about the role of governments what can governments do to ensure that there is monitoring and there is verification there are safeguards and there are proper regulations both the carrots and the sticks I think governments are where the action where the ball got rolling so I think they played that role clearly they need to as they represent the people of the country they're the ones that need to safeguard the well-being of the people that make sure that all factions within society have a voice at the table and are represented at the table that are taken seriously that the concerns are being addressed that it's not an uneven playing field for everyone so that the trade-offs can be managed, recognized and dealt with so that's certainly a role for governments but we all know that in many places there are problems associated with governance and there's not always good governance there are countries that are in conflict there are countries that have a long history of governments not representing all members of society or all factions within society and these things it's an imperfect world that we're stepping into to begin to implement these things we need to recognize these things and this is hopefully what the international community can also play a role in providing some of the backstopping the fact-checking on some of these issues when claims are made by countries well these claims need to be actually scrutinized and verified and that's the whole point of we have within the red mechanism a whole discussion on measurement reporting and verification and this verification side of things has been the real difficult issue to deal with in the negotiations because it means that countries actually have to give up a certain level of sovereignty and submit their claims or their statements to international scrutiny and then if what they claim doesn't hold up to that scrutiny palliative measures need to be taken to do that so it's probably the more difficult thing to negotiate in this is the verification but you can have trust but if you don't verify it's hard to maintain trust over the long term we've learned that through all sorts of international negotiations around economics, arms reductions I think one area where governments could be really helpful is that they could lift the issues and not look at one objective at a time as we discussed several times in this conversation if you only look at the climate objective then maybe other objectives will suffer in the same vein if you only look at the issues of forest and forestry then what happens with food security and with other aspects of development and particularly the land-based sectors if you take agriculture and forest and perhaps also mining how do they interact and how can we find combined solutions because as it is today you can one day have as a major news item that deforestation continues and we have to meet our red obligations and the government must help to make that happen and the next day you can see a news item that the price of rice is going up and now the government has to step in to make sure that we produce enough rice to feed the population so you always have these contradictory objectives being tabled and governments I think should step up and look at it more comprehensively I was just following up on a point that you raised earlier about social issues related to red plus a major study by C4 which is going to be released soon is showing that women are participating less in red plus processes they know very little about red plus as well and I think that that's going to undermine seriously undermine both the efficacy and legitimacy of red plus what can be done to safeguard these issues and ensure that red plus is more inclusive that's a very good question there is an international commitment to a certain number of safeguards within the implementation of the red mechanism and amongst that is free prior informed consent of people who are currently using forest resources and we know that women make up more than 50% of rural population because of rural to urban migration women tend to be more present in the villages and making the decisions about how land is managed in these villages so it's extremely important to bring them into the discussion and have their concerns recognized civil society has a huge role to play in this right now and is trying to play that role but I think the onus has been on the governments to make some extra steps as they put in place their red mechanisms to make sure that their internal national consultative processes are taking women's issues into account that women are at the table and they're well represented that their views are represented it's something that the international community is committed to but again we're early days in the implementation and things are not perfect and clearly this is one area where rapid progress should be made and this should be made a matter of priority for national processes and the international community needs to step up and make sure that when countries report on what they're doing with respect to these safeguards and the implementation of these safeguards that these questions are asked particularly about gender and disadvantaged communities, marginalized communities within society but how, just the follow up question how does that happen at an international level especially when marginalization, you know, vulnerable communities they differ from one society to another so at the international level how can monitoring take place? Countries have to report on what they're doing to achieve implementation of the safeguards and so what needs to be put in place are standards of reporting but also standards of performance and this is where things have broken down a little bit the national sovereignty issue has come into place and it's stopped the international community from putting forward standards but standards of performance it's really sort of stopped it's stuck right now at standards of reporting I think as reports come in and as these issues come more to the fore civil society of course is going to be keeping an eye on this and making us more aware of this scientists and researchers need to be looking at this as well and reporting on just what is happening as more knowledge about this comes about I think we're going to see the international community move a little further down the road to specifying standards of performance in addition to standards of reporting and once those standards of performance are in place then countries will have better guidance on what to do to implement it but ultimately the responsibility to come back to the national government and we get back to the issues I raised before better or not better, not so good performance of individual governments Do you think that the drive for standardized measures and reporting poses some risks for the diversity of situations in the reality that we have? If they get over prescriptive I would agree if it's more about achievement of performance to certain levels I think the standards can actually help countries and I think this is where there's a big debate in Lima about whether countries need additional guidance for the safeguards several countries were really in favor because they were completely lost like where do we start on this how can we tell if we're achieving any performance if we're improving or not what are our benchmarks, what are our baselines how do we measure our progress other countries felt it was more of an international overreach and impinging on their own ability to make decisions and if you looked at the countries it seemed to be the emerging economies were comfortable being able to work with what they already had in international guidance and achieve the outcomes it was the least developed countries that felt they were lost and needed additional guidance so I think it's... I still think that at some point additional guidance with respect to how do you define if you've achieved free prior and informed consent how much dissent is allowable if one person dissents does it stop the whole thing if ten people dissent does it stop the whole thing if a hundred people dissent does it stop what constitutes proper dissent and what level does dissent stop actions and activities and I think these are some of the things that the countries are wrestling with right now and also who decides what the criteria should be that's an important factor too and that brings me to my last question which is what is the role of C4 in both highlighting the importance of forests and in safeguarding the rights and livelihoods of people who live in the forest what do you see and where could... where is C4 headed? Guarding the values of the natural resource as well as making sure that the livelihoods of people are looked after, taken care of and opportunities are there and then ultimately to serve all that that the governance of forest natural resources and also law and order at large is serving these purposes I think we have a very broad playing field as C4 and we work with forestry in the broadest possible manner to cover this full range of subways that I mentioned and what we do is research of course but we also have a role in building capacities to understand and deal with these issues in the countries where we operate and also we have taken on a role to reach out and to nurture a dialogue on these issues both at the international level and the national level so it's really exciting because forestry I think will be one of the cornerstones in the new development and climate frameworks that we will see materializing in 2015 and forestry is really relevant across the board in that framework one interesting comparison is with the millennium development goals that we had starting in year 2000 and they were kind of designed in the same way as the SDGs were at least with the same purpose although they were only to be valid for the so-called developing countries whereas the SDGs were supposed to be global but one as I see it major flaw with the MDGs was that forests were only visible under the environment goal and the only indicator that brought up forests explicitly was the one that talked about area change that is deforestation plus the gain of forests that was the only measure by which the state of forest and the developments and the success of forestry was communicated under the MDGs and therefore I think it's really really important that we now look at the new development framework in a broader way so that we can incorporate also the contributions of forestry to all the fields that Lou mentioned to eliminate poverty, food security, energy issues, water issues prosperity and green economy it's across the board and I think this comparison and looking back at the MDGs as not so perfect arrangement for forest is important and I think as a research organization being able to put in place research that looks at what policies lead to positive outcomes what policies lead to failures to achieve those outcomes what is it about policy processes that lead to successful outcomes of the policy process what measures on the ground actually achieve progress what are the benchmarks, what are the baselines and what sort of progress can be achieved and how can we recognize and manage these trade-offs there are going to be emerging issues as consumption patterns change as population grows as where populations and households live and earn their livings and how they organize their livelihoods as that changes it can be huge issues that come up that the society is going to need to face and a research organization like C4 is there to help put in place the evidence the policy makers can make informed decisions that land managers can make informed decisions and be more sure of the outcome of what they're trying to put the policies and measures they're putting in place to achieving their objectives Thank you very much to you both for the stimulating conversation