Editing IPCC:AR6/SRCCL/Chapter-7 (section)

==== 7.4.6.4 Energy access and biomass use ====

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Access to modern energy services is a key component of SDG 7, with an estimated 1.1 billion people lacking access to electricity, while nearly 3 billion people rely on traditional biomass (fuelwood, agriculture residues, animal dung, charcoal) for household energy needs (IEA 2017 <sup>[[#fn:r758|758]]</sup> ). Lack of access to modern energy services is significant in the context of land-climate systems because heavy reliance on traditional biomass can contribute to land degradation, household air pollution and GHG emissions (see Cross-Chapter Box 12 in Chapter 7). A variety of policy instruments and programmes have been aimed at improving energy access and thereby reducing the heavy reliance on traditional biomass (Table 7.2); there is ''high evidence'' and ''high agreement'' that programmes and policies that reduce dependence on traditional biomass will have benefits for health and household productivity, as well as reducing land degradation (Section 4.5.4) and GHG emissions (Bailis et al. 2015 <sup>[[#fn:r759|759]]</sup> ; Cutz et al. 2017a <sup>[[#fn:r760|760]]</sup> ; Masera et al. 2015 <sup>[[#fn:r761|761]]</sup> ; Goldemberg et al. 2018a <sup>[[#fn:r762|762]]</sup> ; Sola et al. 2016a <sup>[[#fn:r763|763]]</sup> ; Rao and Pachauri 2017 <sup>[[#fn:r764|764]]</sup> ; Denton et al. 2014 <sup>[[#fn:r765|765]]</sup> ). There can be trade-offs across different options, especially between health and climate benefits, since more efficient wood stoves might have only limited effect, whereas gaseous and liquid fuels (e.g., biogas, LPG, bioethanol) will have highly positive health benefits and climate benefits that vary depending on specific circumstances of the substitution (Cameron et al. 2016 <sup>[[#fn:r766|766]]</sup> ; Goldemberg et al. 2018b <sup>[[#fn:r767|767]]</sup> ). Unlike traditional biomass, modern bioenergy offers high-quality energy services, although, for household cookstoves, even the cleanest options using wood may not perform as well in terms of health and/or climate benefits (Fuso Nerini et al. 2017 <sup>[[#fn:r768|768]]</sup> ; Goldemberg et al. 2018b <sup>[[#fn:r769|769]]</sup> ).

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'''Case study | Forest conservation instruments: REDD+ in the Amazon and India'''

More than 50 countries have developed national REDD+ strategies, which have key conditions for addressing deforestation and forest degradation (improved monitoring capacities, understanding of drivers, increased stakeholder involvement, and providing a platform to secure indigenous and community land rights). However, to achieve its original objectives and to be effective under current conditions, forest-based mitigation actions need to be incorporated in national development plans and official climate strategies, and mainstreamed across sectors and levels of government (Angelsen et al. 2018a <sup>[[#fn:r770|770]]</sup> ).

The Amazon region can illustrate the complexity of the implementation of REDD+, in the most biodiverse place on the planet, with millions of inhabitants and hundreds of ethnic groups, under the jurisdiction of eight countries. While different experiences can be drawn at different spatial scales, at the regional-level, for example, Amazon Fund (van der Hoff et al. 2018 <sup>[[#fn:r771|771]]</sup> ), at the subnational level (Furtado 2018 <sup>[[#fn:r772|772]]</sup> ), and at the local level (Alvarez et al. 2016 <sup>[[#fn:r773|773]]</sup> ; Simonet et al. 2019 <sup>[[#fn:r774|774]]</sup> ), there is ''medium evidence'' and ''high agreement'' that REDD+ has stimulated sustainable land-use investments but is also competing with other land uses (e.g., agroindustry) and scarce international funding (both public and private) (Bastos Lima et al. 2017b <sup>[[#fn:r775|775]]</sup> ; Angelsen et al. 2018b <sup>[[#fn:r776|776]]</sup> ).

In the Amazon, at the local level, a critical issue has been the incorporation of indigenous people in the planning and distribution of benefits of REDD+ projects. While REDD+, in some cases, has enhanced participation of community members in the policy-planning process, fund management, and carbon baseline establishment, increasing project reliability and equity (West 2016), it is clear that, in this region, insecure and overlapping land rights, as well as unclear and contradictory institutional responsibilities, are probably the major problems for REDD+ implementation (Loaiza et al. 2017 <sup>[[#fn:r777|777]]</sup> ). Despite legal and rhetoric recognition of indigenous land rights, effective recognition is still lacking (Aguilar-Støen 2017 <sup>[[#fn:r778|778]]</sup> ). The key to the success of REDD+ in the Amazon, has been the application of both incentives and disincentives on key safeguard indicators, including land security, participation, and well-being (Duchelle et al. 2017 <sup>[[#fn:r779|779]]</sup> ).

On the other hand, at the subnational level, REDD+ has been unable to shape land-use dynamics or landscape governance, in areas suffering strong exogenous factors, such as extractive industries, and in the absence of effective regional regulation for sustainable land use (Rodriguez-Ward et al. 2018 <sup>[[#fn:r780|780]]</sup> ; Bastos Lima et al. 2017b <sup>[[#fn:r781|781]]</sup> ). Moreover, projects with weak financial incentives, engage households with high off-farm income, which are already better off than the poorest families (Loaiza et al. 2015 <sup>[[#fn:r782|782]]</sup> ). Beyond operational issues, clashing interpretations of results might create conflict between implementing countries or organisations and donor countries, which have revealed concerns over the performance of projects (van der Hoff et al. 2018 <sup>[[#fn:r783|783]]</sup> ) REDD+ Amazonian projects often face methodological issues, including how to assess the opportunity cost among landholders, and informing REDD+ implementation (Kweka et al. 2016 <sup>[[#fn:r784|784]]</sup> ). REDD+ based projects depend on consistent environmental monitoring methodologies for measuring, reporting and verification and, in the Amazon, land-cover estimates are crucial for environmental monitoring efforts (Chávez Michaelsen et al. 2017 <sup>[[#fn:r785|785]]</sup> ).

In India, forests and wildlife concerns are on the concurrent list of the Constitution since an amendment in 1976, thus giving the central or federal government a strong role in matters related to governance of forests. High rates of deforestation due to development projects led to the Forest (Conservation) Act (1980) which requires central government approval for diversion of forest land in any state or union territory.

Before 2006, forest diversion for development projects leading to deforestation needed clearance from the Central Government under the provisions of the Forest (Conservation Act) 1980. In order to regulate forest diversion, and as payment for ES, a net present value (NPV) frame-work was introduced by the Supreme Court of India, informed by the Kanchan Chopra committee (Chopra 2017). The Forest (Conservation) Act of 1980 requires compensatory afforestation in lieu of forest diversion, and the Supreme Court established the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) which collects funds for compensatory afforestation and on account of NPV from project developers.

As of February 2018, 6825 million USD had accumulated in CAMPA funds in lieu of NPV paid by developers diverting forest land throughout India for non-forest use. Funds are released by the central government to state governments for afforestation and conservation-related activities to ‘compensate’ for diversion of forests. This is now governed by legislation called the CAMPA Act, passed by the Parliament of India in July 2016. The CAMPA mechanism has, however, invited criticism on various counts in terms of undervaluation of forest, inequality, lack of participation and environmental justice (Temper and Martinez-Alier 2013).

The other significant development related to forest land was the landmark legislation called the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 or Forest Rights Act (FRA) passed by the Parliament of India in 2007. This is the largest forest tenure legal instrument in the world and attempted to undo historical injustice to forest dwellers and forest-dependent communities whose traditional rights and access were legally denied under forest and wildlife conservation laws. The FRA recognises the right to individual land titles on land already cleared, as well as community forest rights such as collection of forest produce. A total of 64,328 community forest rights and a total of 17,040,343 individual land titles had been approved and granted up to the end of 2017. Current concerns on policy and implementation gaps are about strengths and pitfalls of decentralisation, identifying genuine right holders, verification of land rights using technology and best practices, and curbing illegal claims (Sarap et al. 2013; Reddy et al. 2011; Aggarwal 2011; Ramnath 2008; Ministry of Environment and Forests and Ministry and Tribal Affairs, Government of India 2010).

As per the FRA, the forest rights shall be conferred free of all encumbrances and procedural requirements. Furthermore, without the FRA’s provision for getting the informed consent of local communities for both diversion of community forest land and for reforestation, there would be legal and administrative hurdles in using existing forest land for implementation of India’s ambitious Green India Mission that aims to respond to climate change by a combination of adaptation and mitigation measures in the forestry sector. It aims to increase forest/tree cover to the extent of 5 million hectares (Mha) and improve quality of forest/tree cover on another 5 Mha of forest/non-forest lands and support forest-based livelihoods of 3 million families and generate co-benefits through ES (Government of India 2010).

Thus, the community forest land recognised under FRA can be used for the purpose of compensatory afforestation or restoration under REDD+ only with informed consent of the communities and a decentralised mechanism for using CAMPA funds. India’s forest and forest restoration can potentially move away from a top-down carbon centric model with the effective participation of local communities (Vijge and Gupta 2014; Murthy et al. 2018a).

India has also experimented with the world’s first national inter-governmental ecological fiscal transfer (EFT) from central to local and state government to reward them for retaining forest cover. In 2014, India’s 14th Finance Commission added forest cover to the formula that determines the amount of tax revenue the central government distributes annually to each of India’s 29 states. It is estimated that, in four years, it would have distributed 6.9–12 billion USD per year to states in proportion to their 2013 forest cover, amounting to around 174–303 USD per hectare of forest per year (Busch and Mukherjee 2017). State governments in India now have a sizeable fiscal incentive based on extent of forest cover at the time of policy implementation, contributing to the achievement of India’s climate mitigation and forest conservation goals. India’s tax revenue distribution reform has created the world’s first EFTs for forest conservation, and a potential model for other countries. However, it is to be noted that EFT is calculated based on a one-time estimate of forest cover prior to policy implementation, hence does not incentivise ongoing protection and this is a policy gap. It’s still too early but its impact on trends in forest cover in the future and its ability to conserve forests without other investments and policy instruments is promising but untested (Busch and Mukherjee 2017; Busch 2018).

In order to build on the new promising policy developments on forest rights and fiscal incentives for forest conservation in India, incentivising ongoing protection, further investments in monitoring (Busch 2018), decentralisation (Somanathan et al. 2009) and promoting diverse non-agricultural forest and range of land-based livelihoods (e.g., sustainable non-timber forest product extraction, regulated pastures, carbon credits for forest regeneration on marginal agriculture land and ecotourism revenues) as part of individual and community forest tenure and rights are ongoing concerns. Decentralised sharing of CAMPA funds between government and local communities for forest restoration as originally suggested and filling in implementation gaps could help reconcile climate change mitigation through forest conservation, REDD+ and environmental justice (Vijge and Gupta 2014; Temper and Martinez-Alier 2013; Badola et al. 2013; Sun and Chaturvedi 2016; Murthy et al. 2018b; Chopra 2017; Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, and Ministry of Tribal Affairs, Government of India 2010).

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