Katoomba XVII Just Hours Away

The 17th Katoomba Meeting will take place in Hanoi on June 22-23, bringing together policy-makers, farmers, financiers, and others whose lives and livelihoods depend on preserving the region’s living ecosystems.   Building on the success of our previous meetings (most recently in Accra and Palo Alto), we’ll be using the internet to make this a truly global exchange of idea. We’d like to invite your participation.

22 June 2010 | Katoomba XVII is about to kick off in Hanoi, Vietnam, and we’d like to invite you to join us here.

We’ve also set up user groups on LinkedIn and facebook to help you follow along in real-time.

You can also follow us on twitter, where EM goes by the name EcoMarketplace and the Katoomba Meetings go by the name KatoombaGroup.

Why Hanoi?

While a number of projects are underway, PES in the Southeast Asia region primarily occurs on an ad hoc basis through small-scale pilot projects. However, information, capacity to design and manage PES deals, and institutions to support on-the-ground implementation are often lacking and have hindered efforts to scale up.

Carbon markets, both regulated and voluntary, have grown rapidly and offer opportunities for new investment in rural regions of SE Asia.

The emergence of opportunities for Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) makes it even more important for countries in the region to build their capacity and put in place ‘REDD readiness’ strategies.

Many SE Asian nations face a range of water-related challenges, including threats to reliable flows of water and the marine environment. While there are efforts underway to introduce market-based approaches — such as payments for watershed services (PWS) and user fees in marine protected areas — there remain outstanding questions, such as:

• how to identify additional prospective buyers;
• how to structure the contracts;
• how to distribute payments equitably to communities;
• how to monitor the schemes to ensure efficient and effective delivery of the service; and
• how to ensure that payments schemes are sustainable.

Mangrove ecosystems, in particular, are of particular interest to stakeholders in the region and represent an interesting vehicle to bridge forest and marine, adaptation and mitigation, and local and international financing schemes (e.g. REDD). Carbon pools of mangroves are now being shown to exceed that of upland tropical forests. Throughout the Mekong region, market-based instruments for the conservation of marine and mangrove ecosystems are still nascent, with only a few small-scale case studies or pilots. In response to these questions and challenges, the 2010 South East Asia Katoomba Group meeting offers a unique opportunity to further develop:

• REDD readiness strategies including post-COP15 discussions on national-level REDD systems, international, regional and national experience, investor and other stakeholder engagement, pilot demonstration sites, capacity building / training needs, and research agendas; and
• Payment for Watershed Services
• Payment for Marine Ecosystem services throughout the region, by exploring how climate change adaptation strategies can be complemented by mitigation measures and revenues from carbon credits; and identifying buyers for a range of marine ecosystem services.
• Biodiversity Markets and Market-like Structures