Emerging Challenges on Climate Change, Forestry and Sustainable Development RP Vol. IX No 3 - MMIX

Emerging Challenges on 

Climate Change, Forestry and Sustainable Development

International Conference on the occasion of the 30^th

Anniversary of Wondo Guenet Forestry College (20-21 March 2009)

Keynote address RP Vol. IX No 3 - MMIX

Costantinos Berhutesfa Costantinos, PhD

President, Lem Ethiopia: The Environment and Development Society

Professor, Public Policy & Sustainable Institutional Reforms https://addisababa.academia.edu/CostyCostantinos

Summary

The major constraints to the forestry sector in particular and the live natural resources in general are: absence of a clearly defined forest policy, lack of strong and stable institution responsible for the forestry sector, lack of the past government's recognition of the seriousness of the situation and lack of a participatory approach in the implementation of social forestry programmes. Unless the above listed constraints are solved, there will be little hope for the forestry sector to bring about a significant and positive impact on the development and conservation of the country's forest resources. The suggested solutions and strategies to overcome these are formulation of appropriate and clear environmental and forest policies are a prerequisite for successful forestry development in Ethiopia. Key areas that require clear policy statement include the allocation of existing state forests into protection and production forests, increased autonomy for forest management institutes, incentives and rewards in promotion of private forestry development, and people’s participation and benefit sharing of local communities. The active participation of local communities is quite important in order to develop those forest areas that will be set aside for protection and production.

On climate change, BBC asserts that “Europe's leading insurance companies are now so worried by global warming; that they are likely to use their financial muscle to get governments and the world's oil companies to do more to cut greenhouse gas emissions. While this philosophical debate will continue to flourish in the corridors of the Ivy League, it is important to have national legislations such as the Bolivian one to support processes which empower rural people and their institutions, strengthen human and institutional capacity of community organisations to further the proliferation of communities of practice on indigenous think and improve their institutional capacity to adapt and develop new methods to collate and disseminate deepened knowledge, that must be translated into practical tools for endogenous sustainable local management of natural resources, by rural people themselves. Nonetheless, there is a caveat to it. Structural modernist constraints will indubitably continue to militate against possibilities of People to People driven sustainable development and may be reinforced by specific, more or less conscious uncertainty and complexity. As an interval between one regime of development ideology to another during which competing actors claim and contest for primacy of ideas, such transitions may be characterised by rules and forms of engagement that are in constant flux and may lead to any number of unpredictable alternative outcomes...

Key words: Forests, Environment, Climate Change, Energy, Popular Participation, Ownership

Read paper here or  https://www.academia.edu/36999824/Emerging_Challenges_on_Climate_Change_Forestry_and_Sustainable_Development_RP_Vol_IX_No_3_-_MMIX