Development Topics [ Web View ]
The Project’s kick off meeting took place during the first week of April 2006 with representatives of the National Offices for Climate Change, Forests Offices, and National Meteorological and Hydrological Services from Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Honduras. Part of its objectives included the specification of development topics for the focus of TroFCCA in Central America.
Considering that the selection of topics would need to take into account goods and services from forest ecosystems, the workshop identified the following ones:
- Drinking water (collection and distribution); and
- Energy (bioenergy and hydropower).
The project will develop specific methodologies to assess the vulnerability of these two sectors, linked to impacts of climate change over forest ecosystems. TroFCCA will give special attention to the linkages between goods and services from forest ecosystems and the identified sectors. On the one hand, forest ecosystems play an important role in improving water quality and in the regulation of the hydrological cycle. On the other, forests do provide fuelwood, particularly relevant for countries like Honduras.
Participants to the workshop stressed the need to consider poverty alleviation as crosscutting to all sectors and as a vital component in planning for adaptation. They also suggested the possibility that TroFCCA adds to the above topics tourism and the provision of non-timber forest products; a decision on these two topics will come at a later stage.
The project will also support national offices in preparing the II National Communications to the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change and on the formulation of adaptation projects in conjunction with regional UNEP/GEF offices.