A new global research initiative from CIFOR and its partners will examine how to

• Enhance the role that forests play in adapting to climate change
• Best manage forests to reduce carbon emissions
• Improve the lives of one billion people living in extreme poverty

Bill Reilly (right), former Administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency, presents a certificate to CIFOR Director General, Frances Seymour, and to Wahjudi Wardojo, the Director General of Indonesia’s Forestry Research and Development Agency. Signed by former President Bill Clinton, the certificate was given in recognition of the initiative and was awarded at the September Annual Meting of the Clinton Global Initiative in New York.

CIFOR’s Climate Change and Forests Initiative

The Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) recently stepped up its long-term investment in climate change research with the 2007 launch of its Climate Change and Forests Initiative.

The initiative embraces two strands of the Center's globally-mandated research agenda: adaptation and mitigation. The former looks at how governments and communities can enhance the role of forests in adapting to climate change. The latter examines how forests can best be managed to reduce carbon emissions and at the same time improve the well-being of a billion impoverished people who depend on forests, partly or wholly, for their livelihoods.

With its history of collaborative, multidisciplinary research in three continents, CIFOR can and does shape climate-change policy in many important and unique ways. In particular, CIFOR has a global mandate to examine and reduce the risks associated with climate change mitigation and adaptation policies – especially where they risk harming those least able to afford them, such as poor rural communities.

Payments for avoided deforestation have the potential to protect the current livelihoods of many of the world’s poor rural communities, and to provide them with new income-generating possibilities.

CIFOR and its partners will produce and disseminate research findings to inform national strategies for reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD). At the international level, CIFOR will use the insights from the initiative’s research to inform the deliberations of parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

CIFOR’s Climate Change and Forests Initiative was launched at the September 2007 Clinton Global Initiative meeting in New York. This yearly event serves as a forum for figures from government, industry, academia and civil society to meet and form philanthropic partnership.

During the meeting CIFOR committed to appointing three new, full-time senior scientists and to host an annual “Forest Day” in parallel with the UNFCCC COP.