 I'm here with Joan Carling who's the Secretary-General for the Asia Indigenous People's Pact. How are you today Joan? I'm fine, quite an overwhelming day of listening to all the presentations. Yeah I think it's been a good conference so far. I'd be interested to know from you to start off with some of the discussion that's emerged in the ADP is around monitoring and the contribution that can be made to the measuring, reporting and verification process when it comes to carbon emissions reductions which is a very important component of Red Plus. So through your work what have been your experiences so far with the way in which Indigenous Peoples are engaged with MRV and measuring, reporting and verifying carbon. Okay let me first start to say that Indigenous Peoples in Asia comprise 70% of the total Indigenous Peoples in the world and we're talking of more than 200 million of Indigenous Peoples and majority are located in the forested areas as part of their territory so that means Red Plus and forest conservation in general is very, very critical to Indigenous Peoples and that's also the reason why a lot of Indigenous Peoples have decided to engage in the process and also to send the message that for us forest is not just carbon, it has other co-benefits and it has multiple values that has to be taken into account and thereby it requires the full and effective participation of Indigenous Peoples in all processes of Red including MRV as well as to ensure that our collective rights particularly to our forest customary rights are recognized and respected and that we are entitled to equitable benefit sharing throughout the phases of Red. Now if we go to the MRV I think there are two components that requires the full engagement of Indigenous Peoples one is the issue of the monitoring of carbon and the second is also the monitoring of the non-carbon benefits as well as the enhancement of biodiversity and the way in our rights are being respected so it's also a matter of monitoring the safeguards and the benefits, the entitlement to benefits to Indigenous Peoples I think that is very, very critical if we want the MRV also to be able to provide for the needs and priorities of Indigenous Peoples. In the UNFCCC discussions that are currently occurring this year there's an emerging issue around the safeguards information system and that looks at the adequacy of the guidance that exists at the moment for the safeguards information system and the type of information that will be fed into the safeguards information system and some recent research that's been undertaken by C4 has identified land tenure as being really the number one issue or the number one challenge when it comes to being able to properly and adequately implement Red Plus and I think back to, I think it probably would have been 2009, 2010 when there was a very strong no rights, no red campaign that was moving forward and I'd be interested to know what your thoughts might be when we think about the types of information that would be useful for a safeguards information system and what your thoughts might be there in the context of land tenure Do you think that would be a useful type of information to be fed into a safeguards information system and reported on at an international level? Certainly because that's the crux of the matter as far as Indigenous Peoples are concerned and that requires developing some key indicators in terms of how land tenure is being addressed For example, one key indicator is how much land are demarcated for the recognition of land tenure of Indigenous Peoples and how our ways of managing our resources are also being acknowledged and recognized for defining the terms of benefits for the entitlement to benefits not only in terms of carbon but also the non-carbon benefits The other area that has to be accounted for is the issue of collective rights of lands and not just the individual rights because that's now, I fear, as the trend in terms of recognizing community land rights that they're breaking up community land rights into individual titles which completely undermines the whole issue of collective ownership and management of forest and other resources by the people that benefits everyone in the community and that opens up the possibility to lead capture of the benefits So for example, if we look at past experience like the PES, the Payment of Ecosystem Services for community forest management in the past, if we look at Vietnam who's been rich in terms of this issue the way it has been arranged is through individual lease of former community lands So suddenly the other members of the communities became the workers of their own community land and being paid by the person who leased So suddenly the relationship, I mean the elite capture was there but also the system is not anymore equitable because when we talk of equitable it should also account for providing the needs of the poorest of the poor as well as accounting for the needs of women So we're not just talking equitable in the abstract sense when you talk of how land tenure is going to be managed and how entitlements are going to be given to the communities And I think the issue of tenure also goes beyond one of just simply land tenure as well because when you start to move into the discussion about benefits whether they're financial or non-financial types of benefits that may derive from these types of frameworks then you also get into discussions around rights to carbon that may exist and another area that I find interesting is the issue of intellectual property and Indigenous peoples and intellectual property I know that there's been, especially in a pharmaceutical context there's been a big issue and it's not really something that has come up to any significant extent in the context of the climate change negotiations I think it was raised by the Philippines at the ADP inter-sensional recently in the context of technology transfer as performing a part of the new climate agreement and so I'd be interested to know, we have these systems coming through where there's a lot of money being spent on MRV systems and technology and we have systems around safeguards monitoring I'd be interested to know from you some examples of unique approaches that would come from Indigenous peoples and what that may mean or how that may equate to the potential for intellectual property to exist I think the problem now of the issue of intellectual property rights is that it is privatized, it's in a private context where the owner is entitled to the benefits of that particular knowledge or skill but from the perspective of Indigenous peoples and from our traditional values, we look at these things for the common goods so you don't privatize something that can be shared for the common goods so when we're talking of resources, it's a resources that should be shared by everyone so that everybody benefits so I think that there's a contradiction in the way we look at things that it's a common property, we operate from the value of common property and for the common goods so for example you're talking of carbon rights we will claim carbon rights not in the context of private individual ownership but the ownership of the community and thereby the benefits should be also for the community in an equitable manner so that is where we are coming from so when you talk of carbon or even the use of medicines it's for the benefit of the people who are sick and needing that kind of medicine and it's not for somebody to take ownership of that plant and sell it for somebody who is sick so that is the area that we are trying to express or mainstream our views that we should always look at this in the context of the common good and not for private or individual profit or benefit I'm from Australia and so in Australia there's been a lot of interesting developments around Indigenous peoples' land rights related issues and native title in Australia and it has largely maintained a circumstance where it is that collective ownership and I think that it is it certainly does raise serious concerns where that begins to be broken down so that's been very useful we're in Indonesia at the moment it would be useful, I know that AIPP has done some work and looked at some of the issues here in Indonesia I think that it's perhaps worthwhile mentioning what I think was a landmark decision of the constitutional court here in Indonesia do you see there is some progress being made in Indonesia around the tenure issue arising from that decision have you noticed that there's been a move in the right direction or are you seeing things going possibly in a different direction here I think the constitutional court decision is really a milestone achievement but it also requires a complete turnaround of the mindset particularly of the forest department in Indonesia as well as some local governments because from what I gather from my colleagues here from Aman is that the way the decision is going to be implemented is according to local governments because of the autonomy law of which they will operate at the local level and they have different interpretations and different attitudes in terms of customary forest so it's still in the dark on how it's going to be implemented but the legal recognition already set the right direction and I hope that eventually indigenous peoples will benefit tremendously from this law and I think that the critical point now is for indigenous communities in Indonesia to really claim it on the ground like what they've been doing they're already putting marks in their territories they're already doing demarcation of their territories Aman has demarcated more than 4 million hectares of customary forest land so that has to be recognized legally by local authorities and by the national government so there needs to be further harmonization I think in terms of how they will operationalize that court decision to ensure that indeed the Masyarakat adat of Indonesia are going to be protected by this law I'm hoping to see some progress made there too I think Aman have done some brilliant work from an legal perspective I think they've done some very brilliant work there so I think that going forward I think that it's in good hands as well I just want to add that perhaps in all my work with indigenous peoples in Asia I think red has opened up really a lot of discussions and has surfaced and highlighted indigenous peoples in a manner that has never happened in the past and it has put on the table the issue of land tenure, particularly collective land tenure of indigenous peoples so now governments like Vietnam, Thailand are moving into that direction which has never been considered in the past so there are very positive developments and positive signs along the recognition of land tenure of indigenous peoples however there's still a long way to go in terms of really the governments having the political will to really recognize and respect collective land rights and allowing people to decide how their resources are going to be used and I think genuine partnership along the recognition of the collective rights of indigenous peoples is the only way that red is going to succeed in a manner that co-benefits and equitable development is going to take place I agree and also I think also building on that point if you go back a few years there was a very I think clear sort of tension that existed more so between conservation work that's being undertaken and indigenous peoples rights related issues and I think that red plus and the discussion that's been happening around red plus has done a great deal to move more in the direction of bridging those gaps as well so I think it has given rise to some very useful discussions but still as you say a long way to go I think so that's been a very good conversation and it's been nice to talk to you