Based on the current land-use policy, spatial planning and maps of oil palm expansion in Indonesia, this study identified three plausible future scenarios; namely business as usual, conservation and sustainable intensification for future development of oil palm plantations in the study area.
This study concludes that ecosystem services are negatively impacted in the business-as-usual scenario due to expansions of oil palm plantations on old-growth forest and regrowth forest. Assuming the lowest intensity of oil palm expansion, the conservation scenario enhances carbon stock and maintains a stable habitat quality relative to the current land use. The sustainable intensification scenario with oil palm expansions only on suitable areas and enhancement of yield generates a positive impact on carbon stock and water yield, whereas habitat quality slightly deteriorates in the study areas. A detailed study at a local level (household or village) that evaluates the economic value of crucial ecosystem services and their trade-offs or synergies is recommended for accurate evaluation to better understand the impacts of oil palm expansion on the local community and the environment.
Tag: conservation
Challenges for developing Forest Stewardship Council certification for ecosystem services: How to enhance local adoption?
The rise of ecosystem services (ES) as a conservation and management tool has changed the way forests are conceived, but so far its translation into management actions has been limited. In this paper, we discuss the development of certification of forest ecosystem services (FES) from the perspective of those implementing it at the local level. We focus on the lessons that emerged from applying the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification framework at selected sites in Chile, Indonesia, Nepal and Vietnam.
Our results indicate a clear relationship between local and global levels in the development of FSC FES certification. Although the FSC already had a broad vision of ES, it was only through local-level learning within a specific pilot experiment that the vision evolved and resulted in more formal FES certification becoming part of FSC forest management certification. We also found that those sites where participatory approaches to management and decision-making were applied could work with an undefined vision of the future system, and still successfully design and implement management activities. However, overall the lack of specific vision and detailed information about future FES certification was problematic in attracting market interest in FSC certified ES.
Simulated Impacts of Soy and Infrastructure Expansion in the Brazilian Amazon: A Maximum Entropy Approach
Historically, the expansion of soy plantations has been a major driver of land-use/cover change (LUCC) in Brazil. While a series of recent public actions and supply-chain commitments reportedly curbed the replacement of forests by soy, the expansion of the agricultural commodity still poses a considerable threat to the Amazonian and Cerrado biomes. Identification of areas under high risk of soy expansion is thus paramount to assist conservation efforts in the region. We mapped the areas suitable for undergoing transition to soy plantations in the Legal Amazon with a machine-learning approach adopted from the ecological modeling literature. Simulated soy expansion for the year 2014 exhibited favorable validation scores compared to other LUCC models. We then used our model to simulate how potential future infrastructure improvements would affect the 2014 probabilities of soy occurrence in the region. In addition to the 2.3 Mha of planted soy in the Legal Amazon in 2014, our model identified another 14.7 Mha with high probability of soy conversion in the region given the infrastructure conditions at that time. Out of those, pastures and forests represented 9.8 and 0.4 Mha, respectively. Under the new infrastructure scenarios simulated, the Legal Amazonian area under high risk of soy conversion increased by up to 2.1 Mha (14.6%). These changes led to up to 11.4 and 51.4% increases in the high-risk of conversion areas of pastures and forests, respectively. If conversion occurs in the identified high-risk areas, at least 4.8 Pg of CO2 could be released into the atmosphere, a value that represents 10 times the total CO2 emissions of Brazil in 2014. Our results highlight the importance of targeting conservation policies and enforcement actions, including the Soy Moratorium, to mitigate future forest cover loss associated with infrastructure improvements in the region.
Are community forests a viable model for the Democratic Republic of Congo?
Since the second half of the 2000s, several options for implementing community-based forest management in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), like the local community forest concession (LCFC), have been discussed in the country’s technical and political circles. Proposals and pilot testing have increased in the last five years, but the funding of initiatives is often proposed for divergent purposes and taking different approaches. We reviewed current experiences in the Eastern province of the DRC and found that nobody has carried out an estimation of the financial returns of the business models they drew up for/with the communities involved. We therefore conducted a financial feasibility analysis for two case studies, estimating the costs of developing/implementing activities and the benefits expected for the communities within the next five years. Three main conclusions were drawn from the analysis: (1) most activities conducted under the LCFC model deal with rural development, and not with forestry operations per se; (2) several forestry activities such as biodiversity conservation or carbon sequestration are not detailed in the management documents and appear to have little legitimacy for local populations; (3) the two LCFCs show a negative financial performance because the inception and implementation costs are substantially higher than the medium-term profits. Community forestry is unlikely to develop in the DRC unless local people are guaranteed that it will contribute to improving their livelihoods, notably their financial and physical capital. This requires that LCFC initiatives focus on actual productive uses of forest resources, which financial performance is systematically assessed ex ante. A simplification of the legal constraints is also needed to reduce the cost of creating and managing a LCFC.
Chapter 12 – SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production – Potential Benefits and Impacts on Forests and Livelihoods
This chapter identifies and analyses the potential impacts and contributions of efforts to achieve SDG 12 Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP) on forests and their conservation, sustainable management and use, as well as forest livelihoods. SCP has been part of the international policy discourse for more than four decades, but the uptake of SCP has not been smooth and has tended to be biased towards relatively weak measures. The inclusion of SCP in the SDG framework gives hope that SCP will receive stronger attention in the international efforts for sustainable development. Although SDG 12 targets or indicators make no direct reference to forests or forest communities, the chapter finds that SDG12 targets can contribute positively to forest protection and conservation efforts. The review of the SDG 12 targets does not point towards any direct trade-offs between achieving the SDG12 targets and protection of forest ecosystems, resources and livelihoods. SDG 12 can contribute to creating enabling conditions for advancing more responsible and sustainable supply of timber and other forest commodities, also linked to more responsible demand. To enhance forest conservation and livelihoods through SCP beyond 2030, an integrative SCP approach addressing systemic issues is needed.
Oil palm expansion in the Brazilian Amazon: The challenge of reconciling conservation and development
The recent Amazon fire crises and the emerging anti-environmental governmental rhetoric across some important countries have again brought to the fore discussions on tropical forests, climate change, and sustainable development. It is more crucial than ever to find viable models that both protect forests and stimulate socioeconomic development as intertwined goals in tropical landscapes. Among the proposals to address that aim–for example, payments for ecosystem services, forest and landscape restoration, and sustainable forest management–sustainable agricultural production has assumed a vital relevance. This dissertation focuses on that relevance. More precisely, it discusses the extent to which sustainable oil palm expansion can be a viable option to reconcile conservation and development in the Amazon. The book’s eight chapters analyze in great detail an expansion process shaped by a unique governance context characterized by robust measures to prevent the deforestation of primary forests and to use degraded lands, and to support the inclusion of smallholder farmers in the business through contract farming schemes. It does so grounded in extensive fieldwork activities carried out between 2014 and 2015 in the Amazonian state of Pará, where the bulk of Brazil’s agricultural investments are located. Brazil has achieved remarkable outcomes in terms of preventing deforestation and stimulating a fairer and more equitable distribution of benefits. This shows that oil palm expansion is not necessarily associated with devastating consequences, such as those observed in Southeast Asia. Yet, the Brazilian model does have some important limitations in terms of inclusivity and viability, which questions its socio-environmental orientation in the long run. By discussing the observed merits and failures, the case study presented here provides an interesting example of the existing challenges and dilemmas encountered when attempting to align agricultural development, poverty alleviation, and forest conservation. As such, this dissertation contributes to global debates on agricultural sustainability governance, smallholder farming, and rural development in general.
Reconciling oil palm economic development and environmental conservation in Indonesia: A value chain dynamic approach
Palm oil makes a significant contribution to the economies of Indonesia and Malaysia through private corporations, state-owned companies and smallholders, with the two countries supplying 85% of the global palm oil. Indonesia has 14 million hectares (ha) of oil palm; its palm oil exports were valued at USD 23 billion in 2017 and USD 21 billion in 2018. Both domestic and international communities, particularly the European Union (EU), have raised concerns about its sustainability and impact on forest conservation. For example, the European Parliament in 2017 issued a resolution to restrict the ability of EU countries to count palm oil-based biodiesel imports toward their renewable 2030 energy targets. This paper describes palm oil value chains in Indonesia at the national level, using value chain analysis and system dynamics modeling. The model is used to understand how the moratorium, peatland conservation, agrarian reform, and the EU biodiesel ban affect plantation expansion and production, employment, CO2 emissions, smallholder incomes, the private sector, and government. The model provides scenarios to make Indonesian palm oil more sustainable through intensification, no-deforestation, and no-peat strategies, as well as through land swapping. There are trade-offs between economic development and environmental conservation, but win-win solutions are available. Scenarios that build synergies between Indonesian palm oil development and forest conservation can help guide the new frontiers of oil palm development in Asia, South America, and Africa.