Sustainable Forest Transitions: In conversation with Dr Sreeja Jaiswal

In this episode, PhD researcher Sandy Nofyanza kicks off a new series of podcasts linked to the GDI's Sustainable Forest Transitions project. Sandy chats to Dr Sreeja Jaiswal, Humboldt Foundation’s International Climate Protection Postdoc Fellow at the University of Heidelberg, about challenges associated with forest restoration efforts and debates surrounding mitigation measures such as carbon offsets. 

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Transcript

Speaker 1 [00:00:02] Welcome to the Global Development Institute podcast, based at the University of Manchester, where Europe's largest research and teaching institutes addressing poverty and inequality. Each episode will bring you the latest thinking, insights and debates in development studies. 

Speaker 2 [00:00:32] Hi, my name is Sandy Nofyanza and this is the Sustainable Forest Transition podcast. We are based at the University of Manchester's Global Development Institute. The Sustainable Forest Transitions Project aims to better understand how restoration and conservation affect not only the forest, but also the communities that depend on them. On this episode, we had an interesting discussion with Dr Sreeja Jaiswal about the need to balance forest restoration, conservation and livelihood goals, including the challenges faced by restoration efforts. Sreeja also talks about the dilemma around using forest as carbon offsets to compensate for continued fossil fuel ambitions elsewhere, and she explains why many developing countries face growing pressure to prioritize emission reductions from agriculture and land use, even while safeguarding indigenous and local communities livelihood remains a high priority for food security and rural development. Enjoy the show.

Speaker 2 [00:02:00] Welcome to the Sustainable Forest Transition podcast. My name is Sandy Nofyanza. I am a student at the Global Development Institute at the University of Manchester. And with the Sustainable Forest Transition, or SFT project, we study the changing nature of forest cover and human development. Today we are joined by Dr Sreeja Jaiswal. She is Humboldt Foundation's international climate protection postdoctoral fellow at Heidelberg University in Germany. She also spent two months last year as a visiting researcher at GDI and the SFT project. So very happy to have you here. 

Speaker 4 [00:02:41] Thank you. Thank you for having me. 

Speaker 2 [00:02:43] Now we are keen to discuss about, forest protection, restoration and local livelihood. And I should mention that this is something that you've studied in work so far, right? So Sreeja, being an economist... What drives you to learn and work for forestry and climate issues in the first place?

Speaker 4 [00:03:05] So I would not put myself think of myself as an economist per se, because my background is in my PhD is in development studies, and my master's also was in development studies and my training. So, my training is more interdisciplinary, and I use knowledge and insights from political science, political ecology and economics to answer questions of relevance for low carbon development in the global South. So, yeah, so how I got interested in climate change issues in the first place was during my masters, and and it was becoming quite obvious during my master's in development studies that the fossil fuel led development path was no longer available to the global South, and we would have to balance, our development goals with, with, climate change, imperatives and. Yeah, and then I moved on to work at, at the Swaminathan Research Foundation. So M.S. Swaminathan, was is known as the father of green revolution in India. And, and he's instrumental in improving the food security situation in India. And that's where I got thinking about climate change and land use issues and issues surrounding climate change and forests and climate change and agriculture and how, how they are going to, what are the implications of these debates around in the global South? 

Speaker 2 [00:04:42] Well. That's cool. So, you started as an economist, and then you, like, expand into the development studies, and you found that everything in between is interesting, right? 

Speaker 4 [00:04:56] Yeah, you could say that. 

Speaker 2 [00:04:58] Right? Yeah. So, I get the basic idea about the forest and carbon. Help me connect the dots. So why are forests now, being seen as a sort of natural way to fight climate change? 

Speaker 4 [00:05:15] So, it isn't completely new. The discussion on forests as carbon sinks. It's been part of the UN triple C negotiations right from the very beginning. And then, there were, heated debates. And there are a lot of, research around Redd+, in the, climate change space. So that Redd plus, stands for reducing emissions from, deforestation and forest degradation. It's an important part of the climate change, policy circles. And but from there on, we have moved on to sort of rebranding, forestry and tree plantations as nature based solutions and, natural climate solutions and more recently. But I would say that they have been a part of the discussion for really long. But what has changed and why are they now being highlighted on such an unprecedented scale? I would say that has something to do with the, how rapidly our global carbon budget is getting over. So, so for a given temperature rise, we can only emit so much of cumulative carbon dioxide. And the latest IPCC report has shown that 4/5 of that carbon budget to stay within 1.5°C is already exhausted. So in the future, we have very little carbon budget left. Right. And this is largely because of, the inability of global not to reduce emissions, as fast as possible that we are in this situation. And, because I have been following the IPCC, reports from the fifth and sixth assessment quite closely. And, I've also been a part of government delegations in the approval plenary of IPCC. So a lot of my understanding of what is happening, comes from, IPCC discussions and, the mitigation pathways that the IPCC assesses. So quite recently, what has happened is, so in the past decade or so, what has happened is to reach the temperature targets for 1.5°C. We have, the, the modeling community, which looks at global mitigation pathways, has started to model more and more, carbon dioxide removal from afforestation and reforestation, as well as bioenergy. So, that sort of helps you keep the temperature to 1.5°C in the absence of the, likelihood and not having, the remaining carbon budget left. So if you model a lot of removal from, a fire station and, reforestation, you can still stay within the temperature target of 1.5°C. And why does this appeal to the modeling community? It's because this is seen as like a cost effective win, win situation. Solution. Planting trees or, you know, restoring forests. So that is the reason why it has become a very, popular solution, so to speak, in the last few years. 

Speaker 2 [00:08:32] Right. Perhaps, can you clarify a bit about what IPCC is and what they do? Why are they significant in the policymaking arena. 

Speaker 4 [00:08:43] So IPCC is stands for Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change, and they do not produce their own research. But what they do is they assess all the climate change research, which has, which has taken place in the past 4 to 5 years. And they are divided into, three working groups of the first working group looks at the physical science of climate change. The second one looks at it's the second one looks at adaptation. And the third one looks at mitigation. And the mitigation one looks at various global pathways which can keep us, assesses various global pathways which can keep us within 1.5°C. So the job of IPCC is basically to produce policy relevant information for policymakers. 

Speaker 2 [00:09:33] Right. 

Speaker 4 [00:09:34] Climate change policymakers. Yes. 

Speaker 2 [00:09:36] So no, no, I get that for us is, tree planting is important for us. It's important. But. We understand that forest also face risks, right from logging, from droughts, from, forest fires. And it can also release, carbon back into the air. And it can be worrying if we also rely too, on forests to balance emissions in the long term. And also, we see that so many forests, globally in its restoration, because of the bus, degradation. So what challenges do you see for forest restoration or tree plantings? 

Speaker 4 [00:10:22] Yeah. So, you've, kind of raised a very important issue. So, again, I'll go back to how these modeling exercises work to explain, this so a lot of these modeling exercises of all the global mitigation pathways, they estimate what is the technical potential of reforestation and afforestation. So these technical potentials don't take into account the feasibility barriers or the socio economic or institutional barriers, which can make a forestation and deforestation, especially in the global South challenging because, and these barriers could be, you know, the land tenure systems or conflict with land rights or indigenous rights or even other land uses and have trade offs with poverty and food security. So this this is sort of looked at as barriers and challenges to the technical potential, which is sort of a very, roundabout way of looking at it. And here I think the forest, forestry or the climate change research community has a lot to learn from the forest, research community, because the forest and livelihood research community or the forest governance research communities has focused on these issues and challenges of, you know, a forestation in research and deforestation. And they've looked at what works and, and what doesn't work. Right. And, so, and so instead of starting from the technical potential as the climate change research community does, it's better to start from what is feasible or what is available to do. Right. So that that is one challenge I see. And the other, and the other one is as like you pointed out that there are risks of relying, overly relying on climate, forest as a climate change solution because the first and foremost thing is, there's no substitute to reducing fossil fuel emissions. Right? And forest can, no of, and, removing, sorry, phasing down fossil fuels, leads to more permanent, emission reductions. Right. Whereas in the case of forests, the carbon sinks can be less permanent. Like you mentioned, it can because of land use changes, because of logging, because of forest fires. They can be emitted back, right? Stored for carbon, can be emitted back into the atmosphere. And then there is also research showing that, as temperatures rise, the ability of forests to sequester carbon also can decrease. 

Speaker 2 [00:13:00] Exactly. Yeah. 

Speaker 4 [00:13:01] Yeah. And, yeah. And of course, there are, there are research showing that, projecting or portraying forest as a win win, cost effective climate solution can also deter fossil fuel emission reductions in the short term. So there are several, risks and challenges. 

Speaker 2 [00:13:19] It's very interesting. When you pointed out about the, when we phase out, when we phase out, fossil fuel, you know, emission goes down. But in the case of forest, it's much more complex. You know, lots of people living in the forest. And it can be permanence is not, permanence of forests. Restoration is like. Not really secure, 100%. And yeah, that's the challenge. And for your fellowship. I know you have been working on protected areas, and, it's social impact in India. So now, we're getting more detail about what you have been working. What do you think that are some of the challenges, linking protected areas and livelihoods in India? The topic that you have raised before. 

Speaker 4 [00:14:20] Yeah. So, yeah, I've been working on, looking at, protected areas in the western part, specifically in India, which is like a sensitive or biodiverse, like a global it's considered a global hotspot of biodiversity. So, to give you a little historical context. So in the 1990s in India, there was sort of a shift in the way conservation was seen. Conservation was thought about so earlier it was more of like a fortress conservation, kind of a paradigm. And now, it was also because of the changes taking place in the rest of the world, it was seen that this this doesn't work, and that you need the trust of the local community and the participation of the local community for forest conservation to work. And in India, especially, the dependence on forests and in the Western Ghats can be quite high among the rural people. And a lot of these protected areas are actually surrounded by plantations and agricultural land. And there are issues of human wildlife conflict and, no issues. And, you know, so, yeah. So there was a shift in how forests, well, how protected areas were managed, to something called the eco development approach. So which was quite similar to the Integrated Conservation and Rural development programs, which were being undertaken all across the world. And so through this eco development approach, they tried to create alternative sources of livelihood for the forest dependent people. And this could be the in eco tourism, this could be in managing the protected area itself, like or you could like there were local people being hired as anti-poaching and anti-poaching drives or as far as guides told guides. But what my research found was that, a lot of the time, these jobs which were being created, these livelihood opportunities were very seasonal in nature. And, so this, and that photos pointed at irregular incomes for the people who earlier could have more regular incomes. So that's one, one challenge that how to, sustainably provide regular, stable incomes to, through the eco development initiatives. And, and, you know, how to have secure livelihoods if, there are going to be restrictions on agricultural. There are going to be frictions on forest resource used. And how do you provide stable, employment alternatives? 

Speaker 2 [00:16:58] Right when you mentioned seasonal, how, what kind of what kind of income? That, that is available on the seasonal basis there. 

Speaker 4 [00:17:08] So the seasonal would be like when there's the tourist season. So you get employed for only, say, 3 or 4 months a year. Or there are like, so and there's something called the fire season where, you know, you need fire management activities. So you employ sort of local daily labor for that. But again, these are not consistent. Like these are, these are not, stable employment cities. There's only, money for certain part of the year. And the rest of the year, you have to figure something else out. Right. So this is, and that's what my research showed, that the, incomes were moving towards irregular, incomes and unemployment. Sorry. Underemployment. 

Speaker 2 [00:17:48] Right. And outside of your research. Do you think there is, if there's, employment, employment opportunities, outside of the tourism season or a fire season for the communities in Western goods? 

Speaker 4 [00:18:04] Yeah. That, so there are some examples of, you know, self-help groups being organized through eco development communities and micro-lending and, you know, starting, small enterprises, like medium to small enterprises or something like that. So there are those kind of opportunities, and it's been tried out in some places. Then there are, there are like, or branding of forest goods or, you know, sustainably cultivated, all manage, goods from sustainably cultivated and managed forest, which can be branded and sold, like a value chain addition, basically value added basically. So those kinds that are some examples of those also being tried out, which are, which can give more regular income. 

Speaker 2 [00:18:55] Right. Thank you. So I saw one of your papers, and, I think it's very recent. It's the, 2023, in Review of Agrarian Studies. And it's also touched upon the, the things you mentioned about the inability of northern countries to reduce emissions as, as quick as possible. And now it's about the paper. It's about the climate injustice where now that, northern countries offset their emission by conserving forests in southern, sort of a global south. How do you see that playing out in reality? What do you think about, you know, the carbon offset and how do they influence forest conservation and rural livelihood in some cases? Maybe you're familiar with. 

Speaker 4 [00:19:46] Yeah. So, there's been a lot of, debate and it's very controversial, that's also, basically, over the voluntary carbon offset market, which is sort of unregulated. That's why 'voluntary' carbon offset market. It's it's a very controversial topic. And there's been research showing that, an investigative journalism piece is showing that a lot of these carbon offsets are not actually doing much for climate change. Climate change. So, the, guy who uses these carbon offsets are mostly these big companies, who have who have sort of established net zero targets or who want to claim that they are carbon neutral or carbon free friendly, and they buy offsets from, for projects which are basically located in the global South. And these can be forest carbon offsets. And so, there is one section of researchers who feel that this kind of brings in money, for forest conservation, and which is a good thing because it's much needed. But then there is there are also dangers of, that these are actually not doing much for climate change because of the way the carbon, offset is calculated. So, so they it might bring bring about some local employment benefits, or it might bring about biodiversity benefits, which is a good thing, but, because of how they are calculated, they might not actually end up reducing, or doing anything for climate change mitigation, so to speak. So for example, what happens in, to so I like to explain it with an example. So there is this forest, sort of, I suppose, ten acres of forest, which was supposed to be cut down. And if the cabinet, if the project was not funded through carbon offsets, it would have been cut down. Right. But what happens is sometimes you over estimate the risk of that forest being cut down and you inflate the risk. And, so then that money which goes in, to protect the forest could have been actually spent elsewhere, and it actually did not end up, doing anything for climate change. Right? Though it protected biodiversity or maybe improved the local, ecosystem, but it did not actually end up doing much for climate change. So you have to make that separation as well. And also, there is also the danger of these, big companies using carbon offsets, to claim carbon neutrality, while not doing much to reduce their actual emissions. So there is that as well. 

Speaker 2 [00:22:39] Right. So it's very complex and. Yeah. And the accounting is also, it's also tricky, right? Carbon accounting and everything. Yeah. 

Speaker 4 [00:22:52] Yeah. So a lot depends on how you construct the baseline of, you know, how how much emissions would have been saved or avoided. Sorry. Yeah. So avoided deforestation. How much of that avoided deforestation? And how do you convert that to carbon dioxide, you know, sinks?

Speaker 2 [00:23:12] Right? And we we can talk about, baselines all day if we want, but it's very complex. 

Speaker 4 [00:23:22] Yeah. And, yeah. And, the, another thing is that they are not standardized, right? Because this this is a voluntary, unregulated carbon market. The rules and regulations are not very standardized. And that's one of the, one of the challenges or of, you know, of the voluntary carbon offset markets. 

Speaker 2 [00:23:43] All right. I guess the voluntary carbon market, using this one standard. And then at the country level, the under under the UNF, triple C, they have sort of one, baseline as well, who are being used for Redd+ projects in various countries for, right. So, yeah, lots of lots of standards and lots of baselines around. Outside. And, you know, land is, you know, of course, land is scarce. There's also debates about how much developing countries should rely on forests, to store carbon. But at the same time, there's also debates of, about using those plants to advance, rural economies and food security. So is that a real policy tension, you, that you have seen? And what kind of pressure are on developing nations to prioritize carbon removal on their land? And why might they resist such thing? 

Speaker 4 [00:24:59] Yeah. So, you've raised a really important point about the policy tension between forestation and, about forestation and reforestation versus other land uses. Right. So, again, I'll go back to some of these global mitigation pathway models. And the IPCC assessed ones, and my own research has to show, I and I, these models basically are not based on any equity concerns or any environmental justice concerns. They explicitly say so in the IPCC that these models don't take into account equity or environmental justice concerns. What they primarily do and what they are are basically cost optimization models, but they try to assign mitigation, wherever it is cheaper for them to do. So that generally turns out to be the global south. And, the afforestation and deforestation can be more cheaply done in the global South. Okay. So and my own research has shown that the amount of land which, these models dedicate to afforestation and reforestation and bioenergy can create land use competition with agricultural land. And what this does is it leads to an increase in agricultural land prices, which thereby leads to an increase in food, prices and creates, food insecurity, giving rise to people at risk of hunger. So that's a real policy tension that if you follow these IPCC mitigation pathways, what you end up having is food insecurity in the global South because of the kind of, land that is dedicating to forestation and reforestation. Okay. And of course, developing countries stages as inequitable. Not only because, the UNF triple C principles say that, you know, that the developing developed countries have to take the lead in mitigation. And while, while what this implies that dedicating so much land to a forestation and deforestation to offset emissions in the global north, what basically this implies is that you're not only passing the burden to the global South, but you're passing the burden to the most vulnerable sections in the global South, which are basically indigenous people or a forest dependent people, the poor, the poor, poor, poor pastoralists. And so what you are doing is you are shifting the burden to them. So that is why the developing countries, might resist such, you know, imposition of, imposition. Yeah. 

Speaker 2 [00:27:45] Yeah. This is very important point because yeah, as you mentioned, most vulnerable person or people in the global South are carrying the burden of, you know, of the emissions emitted in the global North. So yeah, it's very interesting. And do you think there's, measures to protect them, to protect the most vulnerable, from, you know, from climate change and from, from food insecurity or from loss of livelihood that. Is that you familiar with? Yeah. 

Speaker 4 [00:28:23] So that's where I, where I, where I also mentioned previously that the research, on forest governance and forests, you know, forest and livelihood can play a very important role, when designing, such policy, policies to make sure that people are at the front and center and, that they are not adversely affected by, these policies. So, yeah, I think that would be a very important thing to keep in mind, especially for the climate change, research community. And the exchange between them, I feel, is very important. 

Speaker 2 [00:28:58] The exchange, as in. 

Speaker 4 [00:29:00] Climate change research community and the forest policy forest research community. 

Speaker 2 [00:29:06] Right yes, so that much more integration can be happening and we see more equitable this, research that, yeah, being led to more equitable outcomes. So as we wrap up, it's clear that, there are no easy answers, when it comes to using forests or other natural climate solutions, like restoration to address climate change and improving, what our livelihood and is, is clearly a very interesting topic. So for our listeners who are starting to work on similar theme or issue, do you have any books, podcasts, documentaries or anything else that, inspire you and you'd like to recommend? 

Speaker 4 [00:29:55] Okay, that's, I'm glad you asked. So, last, last semester, I taught a course on, global inequality and north south politics of climate change. And I used some videos which were, well received then, you know, I thought helped make a lot of points clear. And I would recommend one, for people who are, just starting out on researching on these issues is one is the John Oliver one, on carbon offsets? It's, hilarious, but it's very alarming. And it sort of gives you a very nice picture of what the problems with the carbon offsets, you know, yeah. And it's like a, I think, 30 minute video, but it, does a very good job of, pointing out the, major issues in the carbon offsets, world, basically. 

Speaker 2 [00:30:52] Right. 

Speaker 4 [00:30:53] I have another recommendation, and this is on, so there is another YouTube. I think it's a channel. It's called Juice Media. And they make what they call honest government ads. 

Speaker 2 [00:31:05] Yes, I saw that. Yeah. 

Speaker 4 [00:31:08] Yeah. And they have some very interesting ones on issues around climate change, especially like I think they have one on net zero and I think they have ban on carbon capture and storage. And they also have one on carbon offsets. And it's it's a very nice fun introduction into these topics. 

Speaker 2 [00:31:27] Right. Thank you so much Sreeja. That was very insightful. And I personally learn a lot from our conversation today. And thank you for all who are listening to our podcasts. Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did and see you next time. Bye bye. 

Speaker 4 [00:31:45] Thank you Sandy. Bye bye.