The study Integrating Adaptation into REDD+ Projects: Potential Impacts and Social Return on Investment (SROI) was conducted by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) in two pilot sites, one in Indonesia and one in the Philippines. It was funded by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) with a grant from the Federal Ministry for Development Cooperation (BMZ).

The main goal of the study was to determine the possible impacts of integrating community-based adaptation interventions into reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and enhancing forest carbon stocks (REDD+) pilot projects by assessing their potential social return on investment....

The village of Setulang (Malinau District, now in North Kalimantan Province ) was selected as the study site for Indonesia after consulting the GIZ Forests and Climate Change Programme (FORCLIME) team. Although Setulang was the focus for the community-level adaptation planning, the whole district was considered in the climate and vulnerability analysis.

The site in Setulang forms part of the GIZ FORCLIME–supported Community Forest Project, which conducts REDD+ pilot activities. The objectives of FORCLIME activities in Kalimantan are to help local authorities introduce sustainable forest management, establish forest management units and secure the preconditions necessary for pilot REDD+ activities....

This study adopted the approach to community-based adaptation planning suggested by Sova et al. (2012) and CARE International (a list of useful resources such as CARE International’s Community-based Adaptation Toolkit, at http://www.careclimatechange.org/tk/cba/en/, is contained in the Annex to the upcoming guidebook).

A two-day participatory workshop (22–23 June 2012) held in Setulang village was attended by 21 community members, including the village chief (kepala desa) and representatives of village groups and authorities such as the Women’s Group, Community Empowerment Group and Tane’ Olen Management Agency. The main objectives of the workshop were to determine the underlying causes of vulnerability, understand...

Community members were asked to list the resources (environmental, social, human, financial etc.) and assets of value in their community, rank them in order of importance, and describe their availability and accessibility (Table 1). Both women and men listed water, agricultural assets and human resources, although with different rankings; men also mentioned social and financial resources and forest resources.

Participants noted that water resources are very important for cooking, washing, bathing and transportation. Women ranked water resources most highly because a stable fresh water supply is essential for most household activities. The village gets its water piped from the Tane’...

Mean seasonality in Malinau is lower than in similar climates in other parts of the world. That is, on average, seasons (whether hot/cold or dry/wet) are not markedly different. The mean monthly temperature ranges from 26.4°C to 27.3°C and precipitation from 205 to 360 mm/month (Figure 8).

Annual climate variability data show that Indonesia has three distinct rainfall regions. Malinau is in what is characterized as Region B, with an equatorial climate and two precipitation peaks, in October–November and March–May (Aldrian and Susanto 2003). Those two peaks are associated with the southward and northward movements of the intertropical...

The community aspirations that emerged during the visioning exercise were grouped into strategy clusters. Setulang villagers then ranked in order of priority those interventions that they can start implementing by capitalizing on the village’s existing assets and resources. Three strategy clusters were discussed: (1) agricultural development (AD); (2) village area management (VAM); and (3) management of Tane’ Olen and livelihood diversification (TOM) (Table 6).

The agricultural development strategies have multiple objectives. One important objective is to develop new fields with good prospects to offer to the young as an attractive alternative to migrating to the city. Planting a greater variety...

Adaptation and mitigation strategies generally differ in their objectives and spatial scales. Mitigation has global benefits that manifest in the longer term whereas adaptation is primarily a local issue with more immediate benefits at that scale (Locatelli 2011). However, mitigation projects can have positive or negative impacts on the adaptive capacity of communities, and adaptation projects can either support or hinder mitigation goals (Locatelli et al. 2011). These linkages are particularly evident in the agriculture and forestry sectors, especially in interventions such as REDD+, and there is a growing interest in exploring how adaptation and mitigation can be pursued simultaneously...

As the monetary values for a complete SROI analysis could not be calculated because of the lack of available data, a CBA for each strategy (rubber agroforestry and rattan handicrafts) was conducted, based on the inputs and potential outputs. The best available data were used for the CBA, sourced from the literature, statistics offices (e.g. the Provincial Statistics Office) and stakeholder statements made during the workshop and interviews; however, these data are not optimal and the results should be interpreted with caution. For this reason, the most conservative estimates were used (e.g. lowest average yield and highest average prices of...