CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
Purpose
To design a conceptual framework for analyzing how the trends relating to global climate change may affect USAID’s ongoing and future programming in the forest sector.
This frame should include elements related to tropical forests and climate change, such as:
- Forest’ role in climate change mitigation and adaptation
- REDD and mitigating climate change in developing countries
- Biofuels trends and their role in sustainable development and land-use change
- Forests, climate change and their social and livelihoods implications
- Emerging forest regime in the context of governance, legal, and institutional issues
- Laws, rights, compliance, and enforcement in the new forest paradigm
- Methods to ensure equity in forest-related investment and financing mechanisms
- Reducing transaction and opportunity costs in forest and carbon markets
- Linking carbon sequestration with the many other environmental services provided by forests
The conceptual framework will clarify general categories of opportunities and threats as well as highlight USAID’s competitive advantages in responding to those needs. It will present an analytical approach for conducting regional and country analysis.
A first proposal of conceptual framework
The conceptual framework, shown in the next figure, is organized in four components:
- Context
Two kinds of factors related to the context of a project or a country are distinguished:
- Baseline trends (markets, governance…) already known and addressed by forest projects
- Climate-related factors (mechanisms, carbon markets, vulnerability). These factors represent new opportunities for a forestry project to develop activities that contribute to climate change mitigation or adaptation.
- Activities
Three kinds of activities are distinguished:
- Baseline land use activities, e.g. agriculture or deforestation.
- Improved land use targeted by a project for contributing to climate change mitigation or adaptation (e.g. forest conservation or forest rehabilitation).
- Project strategic activities (e.g. capacity building or monitoring).
- Outcomes
Activities affect livelihoods, forest area, carbon stock, greenhouse gases emissions, and local environment. These outcomes can be evaluated by indicators, e.g. land-use monitoring or carbon monitoring. A livelihoods assessment encompasses five dimensions (social, financial, physical, human and ecological).
- Project goals
The outcomes of the activities contribute to two kinds of goals:
- Non climate-related goals (poverty alleviation and biodiversity conservation), already considered by USAID projects
- Climate-related goals (mitigation and adaptation), i.e. new goals for forestry projects
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More information
Bruno Locatelli b.locatelli@cgiar.org