Nay Pyi Taw, 24 May 2018
The 2nd National Workshop on PLR review was kicked off in Nay Pyi Taw today. The objectives of the workshop are to check consultation findings to identify potential grievances, disputes, complaints and existing formal or informal mechanisms to address these grievances, to evaluate the institutional capacity and other stakeholders (CSOs, NGOs) to implement these mechanisms; to access the effectiveness of current grievance mechanism to address & resolve anticipated grievances, disputes and complaint, and to collect recommendation for strengthening GRM for REDD+ implementation. U Kyaw Kyaw Lwin, Deputy Director General of Forest Department accompanied with the FD officials, Representatives from government departments, CSOs and NGOs have participated the workshop. In order to achieve the outputs of the workshop, group exercises and presentations among the participants were undertaken with the support of group facilitators.
In his welcome remark, Mr. Tim Boyle, Chief Technical Advisor of UN-REDD National Programme said, “Grievance redress mechanism is so important. Obviously, when we come to implement REDD+, we want to do it in a way where ideally, we don’t lead to any conflicts, we don’t have any complaints. That would be an idea. Unfortunately, in the real world, we have to accept that whatever we do however much we try to take account of different view of stakeholders, there are going to be issue arising where people are going to be not happy.”
“Having a strong and accessible grievance redress mechanism is an absolutely essential part of REDD+. It’s obviously not easy. As we all know, REDD+ covering so many issues involving so many stakeholders. Therefore, we are used to accommodate all of the issues and all of the views of the stakeholders. So designing grievance redress mechanism for REDD+ is much more challenging than for some other issues which may have very narrow interest. It’s a big challenge. Today is the major step in designing effective grievance redress mechanism.”
Myanmar is currently preparing REDD+ National Strategy in line with the agreements under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It involves the identification of potential Policies and Measures (PAMs) to reduce the deforestation and forest degradation in Myanmar as well as setting out the necessary framework, institutional structure and processes for REDD+.
