International Climate Finance: UK aid for halting deforestation and preventing biodiversity loss: Perspectives from citizens in Indonesia
Evaluated ICAI Civic Engagement in Indonesia by consulting forest-dependent peoples and community representatives in Sumatra, Kalimantan and Papua.
Background
Global forests and biodiversity were depleting at an alarming rate and citizens, primarily forest-dependent people, were affected by it. The Global Forest Resources Assessment (FRA), which received data on forest area in 2020 for all 236 countries and territories included in the assessment, showed that the global forest area decreased by about 178 million ha from 32.5% to 30.8% between 1990 and 2020 (FAO, 2020). A similar conclusion was reported by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (2017) that showed over half of the tropical forests had been destroyed since the 1960s. As for biodiversity, the global rate of species extinction was already at least tens to hundreds of times higher than the average rate over the past 10 million years and was accelerating (IPBES, 2019). At the time, the highest rates of biodiversity loss were in the tropics (Roe, Seddon and Elliott, 2019). Biodiversity, which supports forest-dependent people and other living systems, was also threatened by depleting wildlife populations. The World WISE Database (2018) reported that about 6,000 species had been seized between 1999 and 2018, including mammals and various other species.
Responding to this challenge, the UK had bilateral aid commitments of more than £525 million related to deforestation and biodiversity, including programmes on legal timber, forest governance and sustainable land use. An additional £1.3 billion in programming had been announced, including the £1 billion Ayrton Fund, which was predominantly focused on climate-related research. In Indonesia, the UK ICF had numerous bilateral and multilateral programmes aiming at halting deforestation and preventing biodiversity loss (see Annex 1).
The purpose of civic engagement (CE) and its associated consultation was to examine citizens’ perspectives on the effectiveness of UK contributions to preventing deforestation and biodiversity loss and how well the UK had contributed to scaling up effective global action in this area. The CE report explored how well UK aid had helped to identify scalable solutions and mobilise finance while considering the voice of vulnerable communities surrounding the intervention areas.
Approach
Dala used qualitative/participatory methods primarily employing semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions, which allowed for open-ended and in-depth investigation and painted a larger picture about the human stories behind the programmatic data. The design of our engagement process with implementing partners and service users was based on the resources and time available and the optimal value for money such that the levels of input (and any associated risks) were equivalent with the level of expected outputs and their use within the overall review methodology.
The methods were shaped by the context of COVID-19, in which travel and physical gatherings were restricted. This compelled the team to conduct consultations remotely whenever possible and put protocols in place when physical meetings were permissible and deemed safe for the review team members as well as the respondents. Remote data collection was conducted using video conferencing software, such as Zoom, Google Chat, Microsoft Teams, WhatsApp or other comparable technology.