The Environmental Economics Policy Forum for Ethiopia (EEPFE) and the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) co-organized the Africa Regional Dialogue on Forests, Governance and Climate Change, which took place at the United Nations Conference Center (UNCC) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on October 11th and 12th, 2010. The dialogue was attended by participants from across the Africa region, as well as RRI staff from the US.
The Africa-specific edition of this dialogues aimed to build on the successful experience of past RRI events to foster the open and frank exchange of ideas and developments amongst regional decision-makers and civil society on the status of the climate change debate within Africa and its implications for rights, tenure and governance in the region.
Issues addressed include:
“Africa and the climate: The state of play”: discussions on this theme allowed participants to have a common understanding of Africa’s position in the negotiations on climate change and forests, along with a clearer idea of the challenges facing Africa due to climate change.
“Tenure and climate change: Secure tenure in forest landscapes to mitigate and adapt to climate change”: the outcome from this session was a clearer understanding among participants about the links between securing forest tenure rights and achieving climate resilience, while harnessing new mitigation opportunities.
“The governance dimensions of forest landscapes and climate change”: participants expanded the discussion of climate responses to the overall governance requirements to ensure forest‐based climate change mitigation and adaptation responses are equitable and effective.
The RRI dialogue was a pre-event to the Seventh African Development Forum (ADF-VII) co-organized by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), the African Union Commission (AUC) and the African Development Bank (AfDB). The outcomes of the RRI dialogue fed into the main ADF VII that took place during 13-15 October 2010. RRI launched a series of events called the Dialogues on Forests, Governance and Climate Change starting July 2009. The purpose of these Dialogues is to accelerate the exchange of information and learning on the role of forests in climate change and has focused more recently on the implementation of REDD. The biennial African Development Forum, a flagship event of UNECA created in 1999, is a multi-stakeholder platform for debating, discussing and initiating concrete strategies for Africa’s development. The theme of ADF-VII was “Acting on Climate Change for Sustainable Development in Africa.” .