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A country-led initiative in support of the UN Forum on Forests by the Governments of Mexico and Switzerland
Follow CIFOR’s blog from the Oaxaca workshop.
Background
At the closing of UNFF8 on 1 May 2009, Mexico and Switzerland announced that an internationalworkshop on forest governance and Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation(REDD+) in Latin America and the Caribbean would be held in Mexico in 2010. The workshop is acountry-led initiative in support of the United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF).
The Oaxaca Workshop is the fourth country-led initiative focusing on the theme of governanceand decentralisation in forestry. In 2004, Switzerland and Indonesia jointly organised the InterlakenWorkshop on Decentralisation in Forestry as a country-led initiative in support of the UNFF. Thepurpose of that workshop was to capture the global situation in the interplay between forestgovernance and decentralisation. The Interlaken Workshop was followed by regional workshops onforest governance and decentralisation in the Asia Pacific (Yogyakarta, Indonesia, 2006) and Africa(Durban, South Africa, 2008), with each workshop paying special attention to regional realities.
Governance issues are of fundamental importance to sustainable forest management (SFM), the coreobjective of the UNFF. REDD+, as an emerging climate change mitigation mechanism, has considerablepotential to alleviate poverty, but its implementation needs to be better understood in the contextof forest governance. Thus, the Oaxaca Workshop aims to improve understanding of the linkages andsynergies between decentralisation and broader forest governance reforms, SFM, the improvementof living conditions for forest-dependent people and the increasing role of forests in climate changemitigation and adaptation.