Reducing Emissions From Deforestation And Degradation Research Articles

The Big Trees Were Kings: Challenges for Global Response to Climate Change and Tropical Forests Loss

ABSTRACT: Today, a historic opportunity appears to present itself. This is the chance to link the stabilization of the global climate with the financing of tropical forest conservation. The effort to link these two key parts of the Global into a conservation and financing program was a key agenda item at the Copenhagen Conference, COP-15, held in December 2009. The proposal, called Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD), envisions creating marketable carbon offset rights representing the carbon content of tropical forests. These offsets would be sold to firms in the industrial world operating under emissions caps. This system would create incentives to preserve the forest, along with the funds needed to ensure implementation. Investing in natural tropical forests, under existing economic and social conditions, is generally not attractive. In most tropical nations, poor governance and contested property rights are barriers to investment. Future population pressures are also likely to intensify. Western Europe has had experience in managing complex, highly fragmented, and poorly documented forest rights: the forest use rights of medieval times. The fact that adjusting them to modern needs took centuries and generated severe conflict reminds us how difficult massive changes in customary rights can be. Thoughtful study of this experience could generate ideas for managing transitions in tenure rights in the tropical world. From a legal standpoint, a sale of a carbon right in a forest is an exceptionally complex transaction in real property. The frustrations of at Copenhagen reflect the bedrock fact that saving tropical forests is complicated. The prospect REDD can deliver early progress on saving tropical forests should be viewed as an untested hypothesis. Achieving REDD-readiness is likely to be a work of decades if not generations. ABSTRACT I. INTRODUCTION II. CARBON RIGHTS AND TROPICAL FORESTS A. What Is REDD? B. Setting: The Tropical Forest Figure 1: Forest Area (2005) Figure 2: Percent of Natural Forest Sustainably Managed, as Estimated by International Tropical Timber Organization 2006 1. Economics of Tropic Forest Management 2. Economic Challenges and Population Pressures Figure 3: Population Pressures on Forest 3. Governance Challenges Figure 4: Failed States Index Rank, 2008 Figure 5. World Forest Area 2005 C. Delivering a Marketable Carbon Credit: Compliance Market 1. What Is a REDD Project? 2. Carbon Credit as Real Estate Transaction: Who Owns the Carbon? 3. Who Owns the Land? 4. Contracting Carbon for a Century III. LESSONS FROM COMMONS THEORY AND HISTORY A. Theory of the Commons and Its Management 1. Atmosphere as a Commons 2. The Tropical Forest as a Commons B. Learning from Ancient Parchments: Medieval Europe IV. COPENHAGEN AND REDD A. What Happened--and Didn't Happen--.at Copenhagen B. Policy Learning and REDD: Programmatic Puzzles C. Informal Observations on the Major Policy Challenges V. CONCLUSION Going up that river was like travelling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings. An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest. (1) --Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness I. INTRODUCTION At the United Nations Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and Its Impact on Development, General Assembly president, Dr. Ali Abdussalam Treki, urged his listeners to consider: [T]he Earth's biosphere as the common heritage of all life, with humanity as its guardian. It belongs to the common good of humanity and the Earth, as stated at the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment . …

Harnessing Carbon Payments to Protect Biodiversity

Initiatives to reduce carbon emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) are providing increasing incentives for forest protection. The collateral benefits for biodiversity depend on the extent to which emissions reductions and biodiversity conservation can be achieved in the same places. Globally, we demonstrate spatial trade-offs in allocating funds to protect forests for carbon and biodiversity and show that cost-effective spending for REDD would protect relatively few species of forest vertebrates. Because trade-offs are nonlinear, we discover that minor adjustments to the allocation of funds could double the biodiversity protected by REDD, while reducing carbon outcomes by only 4 to 8%.

Neither fast, nor easy: the prospect of Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) in Ghana

SUMMARY On the basis of a detailed case study of the High Forest Zone of Ghana, the paper challenges the common narrative of REDD as being fast and easy. The paper analyses proximate and underlying causes of deforestation and degradation and finds that these processes are driven by multiple underlying causes. The paper goes on to argue that the causes of deforestation and degradation that are found within the realm of the forestry sector, to which REDD measures will be largely confined, have emerged as a result of a political economy that gives priority to economic development over forest conservation, while at the same time allowing powerful interest groups, in particular the political and administrative elite, to financially benefit from resource depletion. The analysis suggests that forest conserving policy reforms are unlikely to come fast and easy, and that the prospect of future REDD payments may not accelerate them. It is argued that the case of Ghana is not unique and that REDD implementation may ...

Forest degradation: it is not a matter of new definitions

Almost all definitions generated through international consensus are imperfect. And the current definition of “forest” used by the Kyoto Protocol of the United Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is no exception. As rightly pointed out by Sasaki and Putz in their recent paper (Sasaki & Putz 2009), the current interval of ground cover value (between 10% and 30%) that defines a “forest” across all signatory countries to the Kyoto Protocol is prone to mask substantial removals of above ground carbon without noticeable changes in forest area. However, we disagree with the authors in that “lack of a universally agreed-upon definition of forest degradation will cause complications when REDD projects are implemented.” We argue instead that a “universal” definition of forest degradation per se is neither necessary nor desirable in the context of Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) activities under the UNFCCC. In 2003, the ninth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC adopted a global definition of forest degradation as “direct human induced long-term loss (persisting for X years or more) of at least Y% of forest carbon stocks (and forest values) since time (T) and not qualifying as deforestation” (Penman et al. 2003). Making this definition operational has been problematic ever since mostly because both X and Y have proven difficult to operationalize (Penman 2008). It is very likely that a definition on degradation will never be agreed upon in the context of UNFCCC negotiations as scientists and other stakeholders have yet to agree on what is a forest and what constitutes being degraded. They seem more successful, however, at defining gradients or progression of degradation in space and time (see Table S1). The emphasis should thus be on monitoring persistent declines of carbon stocks over time, based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) methodologies, and stratified for different activities that remove carbon from the forest and assuming no overall loss of forest cover (see, e.g., GOFC-GOLD 2008; Murdiyarso et al. 2008). The main challenge is obviously to adequately define baseline carbon stocks and monitor their change over time (i.e., the carbon accounting period) to assess decline. Sasaki & Putz (2009) rightly advocate the use of remote sensing for monitoring carbon removal via selective timber harvesting over large areas. Yet quantifying carbon removal through “cryptic” (yet spatially pervasive) degradation such as low-intensity timber harvesting, fuelwood collection, small-scale mining, and understory thinning (Peres et al. 2006) will have to rely on direct monitoring. From the perspective of REDD activities we also need to make sure that we measure and monitor changes in carbon stocks over the landscape, accurately and cost-effectively enough, in order to detect changes. We agree with Sasaki & Putz (2009) that erosion of biodiversity and provision of ecosystem services in any REDD scheme should not be overlooked; but we do not have to

Using satellite radar backscatter to predict above‐ground woody biomass: A consistent relationship across four different African landscapes

Regional‐scale above‐ground biomass (AGB) estimates of tropical savannas and woodlands are highly uncertain, despite their global importance for ecosystems services and as carbon stores. In response, we collated field inventory data from 253 plots at four study sites in Cameroon, Uganda and Mozambique, and examined the relationships between field‐measured AGB and cross‐polarized radar backscatter values derived from ALOS PALSAR, an L‐band satellite sensor. The relationships were highly significant, similar among sites, and displayed high prediction accuracies up to 150 Mg ha−1 (±∼20%). AGB predictions for any given site obtained using equations derived from data from only the other three sites generated only small increases in error. The results suggest that a widely applicable general relationship exists between AGB and L‐band backscatter for lower‐biomass tropical woody vegetation. This relationship allows regional‐scale AGB estimation, required for example by planned REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) schemes.

The potential ecological costs and cobenefits of REDD: a critical review and case study from the Amazon region

AbstractThe United Nations climate treaty may soon include a mechanism for compensating tropical nations that succeed in reducing carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, source of nearly one fifth of global carbon emissions. We review the potential for this mechanism [reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD)] to provoke ecological damages and promote ecological cobenefits. Nations could potentially participate in REDD by slowing clear‐cutting of mature tropical forest, slowing or decreasing the impact of selective logging, promoting forest regeneration and restoration, and expanding tree plantations. REDD could also foster efforts to reduce the incidence of forest fire. Potential ecological costs include the accelerated loss (through displaced agricultural expansion) of low‐biomass, high‐conservation‐value ecosystems, and substitution of low‐biomass vegetation by monoculture tree plantations. These costs could be avoided through measures that protect low‐biomass native ecosystems. Substantial ecological cobenefits should be conferred under most circumstances, and include the maintenance or restoration of (1) watershed functions, (2) local and regional climate regimes, (3) soils and biogeochemical processes, (4) water quality and aquatic habitat, and (5) terrestrial habitat. Some tools already being developed to monitor, report and verify (MRV) carbon emissions performance can also be used to measure other elements of ecosystem function, making development of MRV systems for ecological cobenefits a concrete possibility. Analysis of possible REDD program interventions in a large‐scale Amazon landscape indicates that even modest flows of forest carbon funding can provide substantial cobenefits for aquatic ecosystems, but that the functional integrity of the landscape's myriad small watersheds would be best protected under a more even spatial distribution of forests. Because of its focus on an ecosystem service with global benefits, REDD could access a large pool of global stakeholders willing to pay to maintain carbon in forests, thereby providing a potential cascade of ecosystem services to local stakeholders who would otherwise be unable to afford them.

Climate change mitigation by carbon stock – the case of semi-arid West Africa

Semi-arid West Africa has not been integrated into the afforestation/reforestation (AR) carbon market. Most projects implemented under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) have focused on carbon emission reductions from industry and energy consumption, whereas only few (only one in West Africa) have been certified for AR carbon sequestration. A proposed mechanism, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) to be discussed under COP15 aims to reduce emissions by conserving already existing forests. REDD has high potential for carbon stocking at low costs, but focuses primarily on rain forest countries and excludes semi-arid West Africa from the preliminary setup. African savannas have potential to store carbon in the present situation with degrading ecosystems and relatively low revenues from crops and cattle, especially if it is possible to combine carbon stocking with promotion of secondary crops such as food resources and traditional medicines harvested on a sustainable basis. Methods for modelling and mapping of potential carbon biomass are being developed, but are still in a preliminary state. Although economic benefits from the sale of carbon credits are likely to be limited, carbon stocking is an interesting option if additional benefits are considered such as improved food security and protection of biodiversity.

An assessment of monitoring requirements and costs of 'Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation'

BackgroundNegotiations on a future climate policy framework addressing Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) are ongoing. Regardless of how such a framework will be designed, many technical solutions of estimating forest cover and forest carbon stock change exist to support policy in monitoring and accounting. These technologies typically combine remotely sensed data with ground-based inventories. In this article we assess the costs of monitoring REDD based on available technologies and requirements associated with key elements of REDD policy.ResultsWe find that the design of a REDD policy framework (and specifically its rules) can have a significant impact on monitoring costs. Costs may vary from 0.5 to 550 US$ per square kilometre depending on the required precision of carbon stock and area change detection. Moreover, they follow economies of scale, i.e. single country or project solutions will face relatively higher monitoring costs.ConclusionAlthough monitoring costs are relatively small compared to other cost items within a REDD system, they should be shared not only among countries but also among sectors, because an integrated monitoring system would have multiple benefits for non-REDD management. Overcoming initialization costs and unequal access to monitoring technologies is crucial for implementation of an integrated monitoring system, and demands for international cooperation.

Payments for Ecosystem Services: A New Way of Conserving Biodiversity in Forests

The concept of payments for ecosystem services (PES) is probably the most promising innovation in conservation since Rio 1992, slowly but certainly to expand in the tropics. In a global context of stagnating or even decreasing public funding for biodiversity conservation, PES have the potential both to raise some new funds, and to absorb more efficiently money previously spent otherwise. The most novel and persuasive feature of PES lies in its “business-like” conditional payment form, which differs from traditional conservation projects. The most promising entry point for international PES transfers for biodiversity interests seems to be to piggyback on the currently revived debate on reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD). The novel idea here would be to make agreements at the nation-state level, either bilaterally or multilaterally, and either within or outside the Kyoto framework. However, to take advantage of this opportunity, biodiversity conservation and forest stakeholders would need to be more proactive in the REDD debate than we have seen so far.

Interactions of Reduced Deforestation and the Carbon Market: The Role of Market Regulations and Future Commitments

Reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) has been proposed as a potentially inexpensive and plentiful source of emission abatement to supplement other longterm climate policies. However, critics doubt that REDD credits are environmentally equivalent to domestic emission reductions, and suggest an excess supply may disrupt carbon markets. In this context, we investigate the economic implications of emissions market regulations and future emissions reduction commitments, as well as uncertainties in REDD credit supply. Numerical simulations with a multi-country equilibrium model of the global emissions market show unrestricted exchange of REDD units reduces the international carbon price by half and cuts Annex I compliance costs by roughly one third. Restricting supply or demand of REDD credits reduces price impacts, but comes at the cost of economic efficiency. Alternatively, Annex I reduction commitments could be increased by almost two thirds at constant carbon prices. While REDD provides large economic benefits for tropical rainforest regions, any REDD policy scenario also reduces wealth transfers to traditional CDM host countries through increased competition on the supply-side of the carbon market.

Towards a New Global Forest Science

SUMMARY Forests have returned to the international political agenda as governments deliberate on the successor to the Kyoto Protocol. Yet forest scientists are ill-equipped to answer the questions raised in these discussions, since their concepts and practices are less applicable at global scales. This article outlines key elements of a new global forest science that could answer these questions. It would, for example, monitor the world's forests annually, just as astronomers observe the universe; show how to construct reliable global knowledge about forests; devise methods to identify normative long-term trends in national forest cover to make a Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) Scheme feasible; improve our understanding of the role of forests in global environmental governance; and map biodiversity and carbon stocks holistically so that combating climate change does not undermine biodiversity.

Designing REDD that works for the poor: A case study of a pilot project to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) in Aceh, Indonesia

This article was submitted without an abstract, please refer to the full-text PDF file.

Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) and decentralized forest management

This article was submitted without an abstract, please refer to the full-text PDF file.

Designing REDD that works for the poor: A case study of a pilot project to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) in Aceh, Indonesia

Designing REDD that works for the poor: A case study of a pilot project to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) in Aceh, Indonesia

Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) and decentralized forest management

Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) and decentralized forest management

Taking Adaptation Value Seriously: Designing REDD to Protect Biodiversity

This article examines whether a reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) mechanism would have significant benefits for biodiversity, and observes that such benefits are closely aligned with the adaptation goals of the climate change regime. Due to potential negative impacts of REDD, the article suggests recognition of “biodiversity-enhancing” projects as well as creation of specific financial incentives to promote investment in such projects.

The prospects for Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) in Mesoamerica

SUMMARY The general reluctance of policy makers to include forests in discussions about global warming has changed with the development of measures to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD). Mesoamerica presents a logical starting point to promote REDD due to the extent of its forest, and the relatively advanced state of its forest management institutions and policies. This paper reviews the prospects for REDD in Mesoamerica using PES and other instruments, with emphasis on the effectiveness of REDD measures at reducing emissions, and their efficiency and fairness. It concludes that in spite of reduced deforestation in the region, the growth of payments to avoid deforestation will be the most important policy change related to REDD in the region in the coming years. However, the magnitude and impact of any payments must not be exaggerated and should be set in context of the overall trends resulting from broader social and economic dynamics.

Paying for avoided deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon: from cost assessment to scheme design

SUMMARY Reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) is considered a signifi cant mitigation opportunity. Forest loss in the Brazilian Amazon has traditionally been highest in the world and, thus, represents a likely target for future REDD initiatives. The paper presents an ex-ante assessment of the potential REDD costs in two of the three largest states in the Brazilian Amazon using offi cial land use and cover change statistics. The two states, Mato Grosso and Amazonas, historically feature largely different land use dynamics. The fi ndings focus on the opportunity costs of REDD and suggest that at least 1 million ha of projected deforestation in Mato Grosso and Amazonas could be compensated for at current carbon prices until 2017. Total costs may differ between US$ 330 million and over US$ 1 billion depending on how payment mechanisms are designed. Implications of payment scheme design for the political economy of REDD are discussed.

A methodology to estimate impacts of domestic policies on deforestation: Compensated Successful Efforts for “avoided deforestation” (REDD)

Climate change mitigation would benefit from Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) in developing countries. The REDD mechanism, still in discussion, would be in charge of distilling the right incentives and promoting the right policies for fostering forest conservation. The estimation of reduced emissions induced by the mechanism has been raised as an issue, either for issuing the proper amount of carbon credits or for providing appropriate compensations of foregone revenues and other costs to host countries. This estimation would be based on the gap between observed deforestation and a counterfactual value. Although any prediction of deforestation rates (i.e. business-as-usual scenarios) is challenging, and any negotiated target is subject to obvious political influence, these two ways have been prioritirized so far to determine the counterfactual value. In other words proposals focused on a results-based approach, the relevance of which is questionable because estimations of avoided deforestation are hardly reliable. With this approach, issuance of carbon credits and distribution of financial compensations could threaten respectively environmental integrity of the scheme and equity outcomes. Rather than considering overall deforestation (predicted and observed), we argue that a REDD mechanism would gain from linking distribution of carbon finance to real efforts (opposed to “results”) that developing countries implement for slowing deforestation rates. This would provide strong incentives to design and enforce suitable policies and measures. The methodology we present to measure these efforts (labeled Compensated Successful Efforts) is based on the rationale that overall deforestation is partly due to structural factors, and to domestic policies and measures. This typology differs from others presented in the literature such as proximate/underlying causes, or economic/institutional factors. Using an econometric model, our approach estimates efforts that are (i) independent of structural factors (economic development, population, initial forest area, agricultural export prices), (ii) estimated ex post at the end of the crediting period, and (iii) relative to other countries. In order to illustrate the methodology we apply the model to a panel of 48 countries (Asia, Latin America, Africa) and four periods between 1970 and 2005. We conclude on the feasibility to estimate avoided deforestation using the Compensated Successful Efforts approach. In addition to being conservative from an environmental perspective, this approach tends to guarantee fairness by accounting for dramatic changes during the commitment period. Last, such estimations of avoided deforestation could provide guidance for decisions on further financing of national programs to curb deforestation, as it would help to distinguish between successful and unsuccessful policies.

Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation in Cameroon — Assessing costs and benefits

A new momentum is underway to account for emissions from “avoided deforestation and degradation” at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). This paper assesses the feasibility of one of the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) mechanisms currently discussed, namely that of “Compensated Reduction”, in the case of Cameroon. Here we assess the differential revenues that a farmer could get from 1 ha of land out of two alternative land-uses: shifting cultivation, the traditional land-use pattern in southern Cameroon, or carbon credits as compensation for the conservation of primary forest. It is found that a break-even price of $2.85/t of carbon dioxide equivalent would level shifting cultivation with “Compensated Reduction”. This result suggests that at current carbon prices, and independently form variations in the discount rate, it could already be more profitable to preserve the primary forest rather than to log it in order to grow crops.