As the 21st United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP21) winds down, we at EcoViva reflect on what these negotiations may mean, if anything, for the people most vulnerable to climate change – particularly those of El Salvador’s Lower Lempa.
People of the Lower Lempa are experiencing the effects of climate change firsthand, suffering prolonged drought, heightened flooding, and extreme weather patterns. Moreover, El Salvador has seen average temperatures increase 1.3°C over the last sixty years, a full degree higher than the global average temperature increase of 0.3°C. Such intensified events damage local infrastructure, disrupt food production, and deter economic development.
In preparation to the UN climate talks, the Salvadoran Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources produced El Salvador’s Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC), or the country’s commitments to address climate change, along with 157 other nations. While the ministry stressed El Salvador’s limited impact on global carbon emissions (it accounts for just 0.04% of total emissions), they further emphasized the need to implement a low-carbon development path and strengthen support for mitigation and adaptation efforts.
Throughout the conference, there has been extensive discussion and support for nature-based solutions to climate change, with nature reportedly representing 30% of the solution to climate change. One of the greatest boosts came early on, with Germany, Norway, and the UK making a $5 billion commitment to support REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) implementation.
Various organizations, including the Salvadoran Roundtable on Climate Change, have voiced concern regarding the program’s impact on forest-dependent communities and have even asserted REDD+ as a false solution. As we have seen in the Lower Lempa, the role of forest communities is key to conservation. Community-based management plans throughout the Bay of Jiquilisco have enabled families to maintain their livelihoods, dependent on the sustainable use of resources, as well as advance the conservation of mangrove forests. Such plans, however, require financial support. Funds are needed to create and maintain a plan, as the local enforcers meets to discuss adherence and assess implementation, park rangers monitor the forest, and community leaders maintain environmental education and outreach.
Community management is key, but without finance, the key won’t turn. REDD+ could provide a possible route to finance community-based management plans at scale, thus playing one part in the grand orchestra needed to tackle climate change, though certainly not excusing developed nations’ responsibility to further limit their own emissions.
Moreover, in recognition of these concerns, the UN Conference on Climate Change in 2010 (COP16) developed a set of safeguards to ensure that REDD+ provides positive environmental and social results, including respect for the knowledge and rights of indigenous peoples and local communities and the full and effective participation of all relevant stakeholders in establishing REDD+ projects. As with all policies, there continue to be obstacles and failures in implementation. With the coming infusion of funds following COP21, civil society will need to work with implementing bodies and local communities to ensure that REDD+ follows these safeguards and strengthens both environmental and social benefits.
REDD+ and other climate finance mechanisms need to evolve further to better include critical coastal ecosystems and their adjoining communities. Coastal ecosystems, such as mangrove forests, sea grass beds, and tidal marshes, provide some of the greatest societal benefits in reducing atmospheric carbon and protecting coastal communities. Mangrove forests alone represent 10% of carbon emissions from deforestation, despite constituting just 0.7% of land coverage. In addition to being such an important carbon sink, mangrove forests provide a number of co-benefits to coastal communities by acting as a natural barrier to storm surges, providing critical habitat for fisheries, and filtering water. While there have been some cases of financing mangrove conservation through REDD+, implementing bodies should further engage this important ecosystem, along with the surrounding communities, local governance, and civil society.
Communities in the Lower Lempa already understand the important role of the mangrove ecosystem both in fighting climate change and in building climate resiliency. They have established community-based management plans for the mangrove forest and support continuous reforestation campaigns. Since 2011, the Mangrove Association and EcoViva have helped communities restore over 80 hectares of mangrove forest through the systems-based approach, Ecological Mangrove Restoration.
Finance has played a rather large and sticky role throughout the conference, as developing countries, including El Salvador, have emphasized the need for increased financial support from wealthier countries to address climate change. El Salvador’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hugo Roger Martinez Bonilla, emphasized the responsibility of developed nations, as the largest emitters of greenhouse gases, to provide financial support to more vulnerable countries for the loss and damage suffered due to climate change.
While further international support and finance is certainly needed, communities in the Lower Lempa aren’t waiting to begin the fight. On the frontlines of climate change, these communities have been implementing nature-based mitigation and coastal conservation for years. It’s promising that the international climate talks are catching up in the conversation and starting to back up their words with pledges of finance and support.