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The year 2020 was unprecedented. The WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic on 11 March, and in the months that followed no one was spared from its impact. Apart from the existential threat of the disease itself, the resulting
lockdowns, movement restrictions and curtailing of some civil liberties have resulted in a dire situation worldwide. Although vaccines were in rapid development by the end of the year, talks of building back better still seemed superficial and a distant reality. Health, food, climate, biodiversity, and the state of global to local economies during the pandemic were in their rightful places as priority agendas for all nations in the world for what seemed to be a turn for the worse for both people and planet.
The year 2020 was supposed to kick-off a decade of action to 2030 for the SDGs. Before the pandemic, the SDG reports have already shown uneven results. With the pandemic, any progress from previous years were undone with devastating results for food security, nutrition, and hunger. For climate and biodiversity, alarming rates of biodiversity loss, extreme weather, and the highest concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere were marked in 2020. The nature and biodiversity goals for the last decade, particularly targets for ecosystem protection, were only partially
achieved. In fact, habitat loss and forest degradation have been found to contribute to the rise of zoonotic diseases.
On that note, COVID-19, as an “emerging infectious disease of probable animal origin”, spotlighted zoonotic diseases as an effect of both climate change and nature and biodiversity degradation. The importance of forests couldn’t have been more pronounced and relevant for the 1.6 billion people in the world (including over 200 million of indigenous population in the Asia-Pacific) who are dependent on forests for food, medicines, shelter, and income. The importance
of forests during the pandemic became pivotal during the crisis period, beyond its seasonal contribution.
Yet these forests are being ravaged by threats fueled by an unsustainable and inequitable economic model, further aggravated by the already life-threatening circumstance of the pandemic. Forests and biodiversity figured as truly essential for the survival and sustainability of all peoples and our planet. The clamor for a shift to more sustainable lifestyles was no small outcry; it was a recurring message throughout the year. Furthermore, such agendas carried through to 2021 as the global talks on food for the United Nations Food Systems Summit, climate and biodiversity for the Conference of Parties, and the development goals for the SDGs continued.
Sadly with the global pandemic, we also saw some national governments taking advantage of the situation by passing controversial laws such as the Omnibus law in Indonesia, the Anti-Terror Bill and the division of Palawan island into three provinces in the Philippines, and other policies which are being amended in the absence of transparency. In India, a farmer’s protest against farm acts passed by parliament in September 2020 have been described as “anti-farmer” by
unions.
Civic spaces continued to shrink and dissenting voices were either silenced or threatened with force and even extrajudicial means. Promoting ICCAs remained challenging, with the appreciation for these territories of life still yet
to gain support from lawmakers. One strategy to overcome this is the active participation of the NTFP-EP in regional and international events on ICCAs and grabbing opportunities that allow for advocacy of ICCAs. In our strategic planning, NTFP-EP concurred with the global message that transformational change is extremely vital now and towards the next decade.
NTFP-EP sees the need for transformational change in the status of IPLCs, women and youth in terms of recognition and defense of their rights, their livelihoods, well-being, and health. Their persistent invisibility in statistics and policies need to be directly addressed. The defense of threatened community forests, natural resources and ecosystems and working towards inclusive conservation, where the link between people and forests were emphasized as part of our key strategic actions in the next decade.
The global message of transformational change resonated well with NTFP-EP. IPLCs, women, youth, and civil society have vital roles and contributions to building a better future for all. We summed this up in our theory of change by enabling communities and elevating Community-based Forest Conservation, Indigenous Knowledge, Systems, Practices & Culture, Gender Equality and Women Rights through the enhancement of capacity and space for IPLC, women and youth leadership, building knowledge and evidence, catalyzing stakeholders’ engagements, modeling and facilitating change, and stabilizing our foundation as we mainstream gender and strengthen the organization in the next 10 years.
To this end, NTFP-EP will continue to work towards realizing its vision: “Resilient Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities, with women and youth in Asia, are respected stewards of healthy forests and living securely in their land for generations to come.”
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NTFP-EP’s role at the regional level has been more emphasized this year in order to better amplify the voices of indigenous and local communities. NTFP-EP members, staff and partners deem it useful to divide their roles more appropriately and to make better use of their capacities and positions locally, nationally and beyond, to bring voices from the ground more effectively.
The Asia Pacific Forestry Commission report from their 28th session reflected in their conclusions at the close of the meeting, key messages that resonate with NTFP-EP. For example, the APFC recommended providing greater support for community forestry programmes and community enterprise development, and to continue to expand efforts to support climate change adaptation and mitigation measures. The role of promoting and valuing forest products and low carbon-emitting forest-based livelihood strategies was recognized and seen to contribute to building resilience and addressing climate change.
The ASEAN Member States in 2019 also began the mid-term review of their priorities and strategic plan of action for forestry cooperation to 2025. Enhancing forest product trade and forestry and agriculture contributing significantly to addressing climate change and achieving food security and poverty reduction come up as one of the priorities. NTFP-EP and CSO partners are monitoring this closely to ensure that this priority is pushed not at the expense of indigenous and local forest-dependent communities, instead, trade in forestry and agriculture, serves community needs and safeguards community rights.
The ASEAN Swiss Partnership on Social Forestry and Climate Change (ASFCC) in which NTFP-EP is a partner, shall draw to a close after nine (9) years by February 2020. This year the partnership facilitated multi-sectoral and multi-stakeholder discussions in order to help set the scene of the nexus of social forestry with biodiversity, environment, climate action and food security. We maintained clear messaging that forestry for the benefit of people and future generations must hold primacy.
Member States accept the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a standard or benchmark of sustainable development. 3 out of the 6 countries where NTFP-EP works have submitted national voluntary reports on their progress towards 2030 on their contribution to the fulfillment of the SDGs. Sustaining climate action resonate among these countries, and so with inclusion, sustainability, and poverty reduction. However, Malaysia, India and Vietnam have not submitted reports.
Besides the SDGs, the road to a new global biodiversity framework and progress around the global climate action agreement are relevant to NTFP-EP’s current work and future advocacy strategies. National governments are taking positions about these and NTFP-EP with partners are putting more attention to the position and claims of achievements of their national governments. NTFP-EP and partners in networks and as part of regional alliances are demanding accountability and start to ask questions.
The global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem service of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) in 2019 further validates the state of decline of the environment and biodiversity globally. The message of this widespread decline must send alarm signals, particularly so that the drivers of this decline are mainly anthropogenic. Furthermore, the state of global human rights interlinks with the state of the environment and of biodiversity. Global Witness’ report in 2019 showed serious setbacks on human rights conditions and the state of security of environmental defenders with one of our priority countries, the Philippines, ranking second globally on the killing of environmental defenders.
It is important to note that the drivers of attacks against environmental defenders are the same drivers of resources and biodiversity decline: large scale agriculture, mining and logging – primarily related to the loss of precious forests and natural resources globally and in particular happening at alarming rates in South and Southeast Asia. NTFP-EP realizes that it must also be ready and responsive to support and protect partners against these real threats.
The example of Greta Thurnberg and the wave of youth action against climate change and demanding accountability from our governments and calls for multilateral action have been widely felt. We saw significant disruptions in 2019 - alarming messages of global level analysis and citizen, women and youth activism that provides NTFP-EP and its partners with inspiration and useful triggers to consider the strategic importance of affecting more transformative changes in policies and practice. The depth and breadth of the problems of “business as usual” will require NTFP-EP to be more innovative and consciously transformational in its interventions and strategies.
