Abstract
Forest reference (emission) levels (FREL/FRLs) are baselines for REDD+, and 34 countries have submitted their FREL/FRLs to UNFCCC by January 2018. Most of them used simple historical average without considering the stages of forest transition. This research suggested that the period of calculating FREL/FRLs of simple historical average should be properly chosen if these countries are occupying multiple stages or sub-stages of forest transition. Moreover, as a case study, this research applied both parametric and nonparametric models to approximate forest area dynamics with regard to per capita GDP in Peninsular Malaysia from 1971 to 2016. This research found that, in the case of Peninsular Malaysia, among the parametric models, the biexponential model outperformed the other growth models, while two of the nonparametric models i.e. Friedman local averaging and Nadaraya–Watson kernel smoothing models are the best among all the models on the basis of their RSS, RMSE, and MAE indices. Based on the results of our leave-last-five-out CV, however, the research found that the biexponential and Nadaraya–Watson kernel smoothing models performed best, although the performance of the other two nonparametric models remains unknown. Nonparametric model results indicated that Peninsular Malaysia experienced four sub-stages since 1971 and each sub-stage had different linear trends, yet it still did not reach the turning point of forest transition. This research also found that a linear projection using historical deforestation data when the per capita GDP level reached US$8000 was appropriate for setting FREL/FRLs.
Highlights
REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation plus the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks in developing countries) has become an important regime for mitigating global warming
Most countries use a historical average as their FREL/FRLs, and few countries made linear projections of historical change, they are in different stages of forest transition [3]
By plotting the results of Equations (8) and (9), as shown in Figure 5, we found the slopes of the tangent lines were negative, and forest areas decreased sharply until approximately $6000 of per capita gross domestic product (GDP); after approximately $6000, the slopes of the tangent lines were still negative, but they were decreasing in absolute value and approaching zero
Summary
REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation plus the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks in developing countries) has become an important regime for mitigating global warming. To assess REDD+ efforts effectively, FREL/FRLs by their national circumstances need to be properly calculated when a country is occupying multiple stages or sub-stages of forest transition. The forest transition hypothesis has been widely discussed as a uniform deforestation pattern [4,5,6,7,8,9]. Mather [4] proposed the model of forest resource trends in four stages: 1. Concerning the patterns of deforestation, another hypothesis, the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC), which is sourced from the Kuznets curve in economics and describes the relationships between inequality and economic development, is widely discussed [12,13,14,15,16,17]. EKC explains forest degradation or deforestation from an economic development path. Economic development in one country can help to reduce or stop the forest degradation and deforestation in that country but may cause forest degradation and deforestation in other countries because the increasing demand will make demanders purchase wood from international markets
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