Pulgar-Vidal at Global Landscapes Forum

Peruvian minister of environment and COP20 President Manuel Pulgar-Vidal closed the Global Landscapes Forum over the weekend on December 7.

The Global Landscapes Forum was organised as a side event by CIFOR under the theme of: “Sustainable landscapes for a new climate and development agenda”. The weekend was spend exploring topics ranging from the green economy to technology and innovation or Indigenous peoples.

Landscapes, a recently popularised concept, is important in the context of the Paris negotiations in 2015 given the significance of forests as a carbon sink.

Pulgar-Vidal explained that in Spanish ‘landscape’ translates to aesthetic features without conveying the dynamic natures of landscapes as in the context of the landscapes approach. Landscapes, he explained, are in fact sources of food, fuel, health and livelihood security.

He went on to emphasise the inextricable link between agriculture and the environment and. For Pulgar-Vidal, the interconnectedness of the roles of ministers of environment and ministers of agriculture adding that in most cases, land use change across sectors is poorly documented or not documented at all.

He noted that REDD, the mechanism under the UNFCCC to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, has a “logical value”. REDD should not just be about the economic or market value of forests but, also their value culturally and as a whole ecosystem.

Discussions in Lima have stalled over the establishment of effective safeguards for REDD though despite Pulgar-Vidal being optimistic that Lima will build upon the institutional framework established in Warsaw last year.