17 February 2014 - 18 February 2014
Jakarta, Indonesia

IIASA’s Tropical
Futures Initiative - Kick-off Meeting in Indonesia

The first meeting of IIASA’s Tropical Futures Initiative brings together project partners and high-level stakeholders to launch IIASA’s new major project on forests and sustainable land use in the tropics. 

image courtesy: CIFOR via FLickr

image courtesy: CIFOR via FLickr

The Tropical Futures Initiative (TFI) is a multi-year project developed by IIASA, the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research (INPE), the Brazilian Institute for Applied Economic Research (IPEA), the Indonesian Delivery Unit to the President (UKP4), and the recently created National REDD+ Agency for Indonesia, the first such agency in the world. Further support will come from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF). Based on an approach developed by the International Climate Initiative of the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU)-funded  REDD-PAC project, the TFI aims to develop policy assessment and planning capacity to address deforestation and sustainable land use policies in Indonesia with possible extension to other countries in Southeast Asia. TFI will draw on capacity built in Brazil and thus extend IIASAs tools and methodologies to the three major tropical basins.

The meeting will introduce IIASA and the TFI to a large range of high-level stakeholders and potential project funding organizations, as the financial set-up of the multi-year project is still under development. IIASA, UKP4 and the National REDD+ Agency will sign a memorandum of understanding to officially launch the project.

IIASA Director General and CEO Prof. Dr. Pavel Kabat will speak at the meeting, addressing the importance of linking capacity built at IIASA and its partners in Brazil to the Indonesian case. Collaboration potentials with relevant initiatives in Indonesia will be explored in order to enrich TFI activities.

In a subsequent technical workshop chaired by IIASA researcher Aline Mosnier, partners will establish further details of the collaboration and plans towards a quantitative assessment of REDD+ for Indonesia taking into account national-global links of REDD+ related activities. In the course of the project, researchers will assess policy options, mitigation potentials, investment costs in forestry and agriculture, linkages to the different carbon markets, and synergies as well as trade-offs with other environmental policies and the bio-economy in general.

IIASA models such as the global economic land use model (GLOBIOM) and the global biophysical forestry model (G4M) will be used and supported by existing land use planning tools such as the Land Use Planning for Development with Multiple Environmental Services (LUMENS). LUMENS is an example of existing robust models that capture tropical regions characteristics and is currently under development by the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF). Global interaction among such initiatives will contribute significantly to achieve the TFI goals.

Photo by Ricky Martin for Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR)


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Last edited: 26 February 2016

CONTACT DETAILS

Florian Kraxner

Research Group Leader and Principal Research Scholar Agriculture, Forestry, and Ecosystem Services Research Group - Biodiversity and Natural Resources Program

Johannes Pirker

Guest Research Scholar Novel Data Ecosystems for Sustainability Research Group - Advancing Systems Analysis Program

OPTIONS MAGAZINE

Read the feature article, "IIASA tackles the tropics" in the winter 2014 issue of IIASA's research news magazine.

International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)
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Phone: (+43 2236) 807 0 Fax:(+43 2236) 71 313