Abstract
The proposed hierarchy of production forest management provides modus operandi for forest concessions to move incrementally towards Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) via Reduced-Impact Logging (RIL) and forest certification. Financial benefits are sourced in the “Additionality Zone”, financing the rise in the hierarchy and offsetting prohibitive forest and carbon certification costs. RIL carbon registration components consist of developing credible baseline, additionality and leakage arguments around the business-as-usual scenario through the quantification of historical forest inventory and production records, forest infrastructure records and damage to the residual forest. If conventional harvesting is taken as a baseline, research indicates RIL can potentially reduce emissions by approximately 1–7 tCO2e ha−1yr−1. The current market price of USD $7.30 per tCO2e may result in over USD $50 ha−1yr−1 in additional revenue, well above the estimated USD $3–5 ha−1 in carbon transaction costs. Concessions in Sabah Malaysia demonstrate the financial viability of long-term RIL and certification planning. This may act as a basis for future planned forest management activities involving RIL, carbon and forest certification through the hierarchy of production forest management.
Highlights
In the past century, forestry literature discussed at length the ideals of Sustainable ForestManagement (SFM) in-line with population, infrastructure, economic and climate dynamics [1,2,3].Incremental benefits consisting of holistic environmental, social and economic elements may move the sector closer to Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) at the local, national and international level [4,5].The benefits associated with national development strategies include the long-term planning and implementation of the forest sector
Considering the barriers against SFM, the “additionality zone” is forest management that goes beyond BAU to include Reduced-Impact Logging (RIL) and forest certification
Directional felling is more intensive and time consuming which means that RIL is 10–58% less productive compared to conventional harvesting (CNV) in terms of harvested volume per unit of time [24], this is offset by higher wood recovery resulting from higher efficiency in operations [23]
Summary
Forestry literature discussed at length the ideals of Sustainable Forest. Extensive research defined Reduced-Impact Logging (RIL) as recognized tool to reduce excessive harvest damage while maintaining comparable extraction volumes [11,12,13]. Implementation of both RIL and certification has been limited and additional incentives are required to reach the goal of SFM [7]. Recognizing the importance of such a challenge, the global carbon market has developed modalities to provide financial benefits for the implementation of “additional” project activities designed to reduce levels of global Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions [14,15].
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