deforestation Archives - Page 142 of 143 - Resilient Landscapes (RL)

What a difference 4 decades make: Deforestation in Borneo since 1973

In 1973, 55.8 million hectares (76%), of Borneo was old-growth rainforest. About 19.5 million ha of old-growth forest area was destroyed between 1973 and 2016 by fire and agricultural expansion. By 2016, 50% of the island remained forested.

See also the atlas of deforestation and industrial plantations in Borneo:
www.cifor.org/map/atlas

Learning landscape sustainability and development links

Landscape is a complex of interacting ecosystems and humans. Conflicting interests among various actors with different values and rationalities occurs. A board game, the Landscape Game, was developed based on game theory to help understand the dynamics of land competition, policy measures and sustainability of a landscape. This game introduces landscape conservation, development, environmental services risks and investment alternatives. The game challenges rational players to maximize their revenues, while at the same time sustaining the landscape. Through this game, various policy instruments, e.g.rules, taxes, land use incentives and disincentives were tested. The game play results show the easiness in harmonising sustainability and development when productivity is low. If productivity increases then landscape sustainability can either increase or reduce, affected by government policies and players’ actions. Lessons learned from the game can trigger changes in players’ mental model. The digital version of the game provides opportunities for its wider use.

Why Zambia has not benefitted from its rosewood trade with China

Rosewood is the generic name for several dark-red hardwood species found in tropical regions across the globe. It fetches very high prices because it’s strong, heavy, has a beautiful red hue and takes polish very well – and because the trees are becoming increasingly scarce. On the Chinese market in 2014, for example, prices were in excess of USD$17,000 per ton. That’s ten times higher than the price of more standard tropical hardwood.

There’s a huge demand in China for rosewood logs to make hongmu – antique furniture. Hongmu was used historically by the imperial elite and is now coveted by China’s rising middle class. Supplies of the wood from markets in Latin America and South-East Asia have dwindled in recent years, so Africa has become a key source. Within Africa, Zambia has become one of China’s main rosewood exporters in the past decade.

Komitmen nol-deforestasi di Indonesia: Tantangan tata kelola

Topik utama

Komitmen nol-deforestasi di Indonesia muncul dan menguat dengan cepat. Komitmen ini telah menjangkau sebagian besar produksi minyak kelapa sawit mentah dan hampir seluruh sektor bubur kertas dan kertas (pulp and paper). Umumnya, komitmen tersebut terwujud dalam kebijakan “nol-deforestasi, bebas-eksploitasi (sosial) dan bebas-gambut”.
Komitmen tersebut bergantung pada definisi ‘hutan’ dalam identifikasi dan konservasinya, dan mengandalkan metodologi seperti Nilai Konservasi Tinggi (High Conservation Value) dan Nilai Karbon Tinggi (High Carbon Stock)
Pada tahap awal implementasi terungkap bahwa sektor kelapa sawit menghadapi sejumlah tantangan terkait tata kelola dalam mewujudkan komitmen ini. Tantangan tersebut antara lain kurangnya dukungan peraturan perundangan terhadap implementasi komitmen, dan adanya perbedaan visi berkelanjutan. Perlu dicatat bahwa untuk sektor kertas dan bubur kertas tampak lebih maju dalam menjalankan komitmen.
Integrasi petani ke dalam rantai pasok berkelanjutan memberikan tantangan lain bagi sektor kelapa sawit, yaitu keterlacakan, performa lingkungan lebih baik dan peningkatan hasil panen, yang membutuhkan tindakan segera untuk mengatasinya. Menyelesaikan aspek legalisasi kebun petani menjadi penting dan berada di luar jangkauan komitmen. Kejelasan legalitas bagi petani akan meningkatkan akses mereka terhadap permodalan dan sertifikasi.
Agar efektif, komitmen nol-deforestasi menuntut adanya keselarasan antara tata kelola sektor publik dan swasta. Ini perlu kesepakatan tentang visi berkelanjutan yang didukung oleh kebijakan publik; kemajuan dalam penyelesaian tenurial lahan; penegakan peraturan perundang-undangan di tingkat pusat dan daerah; serta implementasi kebijakan untuk merasionalisasi perluasan perkebunan kelapa sawit yang dikelola petani kecil dan menengah.
Isu pewarisan juga harus diselesaikan oleh grup perusahaan kelapa sawit dan P&P, yaitu melalui restitusi lahan secara legal, dukungan pada petani dan investasi untuk restorasi lahan.

Soybean certification and tropical deforestation in Brazil: how to move towards zero-net deforestation

Brazilian soybean production is part of the complex global system of agricultural land use. Even though soybean production is not the most important direct driver of deforestation, some studies suggest that soy bean expansion indirectly contributes to the conversion of Amazon forest into cattle pastures.

Oil palm expansion in Cameroon: Insights into sustainability opportunities and challenges in Africa

Oil palm production expanded 1.2 million hectares in sub-Saharan Africa since 1990, with expansion accelerating in several heavily forested countries since 2000. Despite a narrative of expansion driven by multinational corporations, we provide evidence of a dynamic non-industrial oil palm production sector linked to a burgeoning informal milling enterprise. Surveys were conducted with oil palm farmers in Cameroon (n = 546), the third largest palm oil producer on the continent with the greatest amount of deforestation due to recent expansion, to determine who is expanding into forest. Seventy-three percent of survey respondents reported clearing forest, the magnitude of which was explained by differences in milling strategies and supply chain integration. Large-scale, non-industrial producers played a disproportionate role in deforestation, many of which were engaged in informal supply chains through the use of non-industrial mills. Farms associated with more clearing tended to use high-yielding seedlings. Even the highest yielding farms, however, averaged only 7.7 tons fresh fruit bunches (FFBs) ha-1 yr-1, well below the potential 20 tons FFBs ha-1 yr-1 yield for Cameroon. We also found a strong relationship between deforestation and land claims. Most farms claimed ownership of their land, although only 5% had official land titles. Conservation challenges in the region arise from land tenure laws that incentivize forest clearing. This study sheds light on the role of informal supply chains in deforestation and highlights the need for strict implementation and enforcement of land use zoning policies.

Land speculation and conservation policy leakage in Brazil

The Brazilian Amazon and Cerrado biomes have been subject to strong pressure from agricultural expansion over the past decades. It is frequently claimed that the associated tree cover loss was partly driven by land speculation. In the mid-2000s, the Brazilian government implemented an innovative policy regime to combat deforestation with a strong focus on the Amazon region. While there is solid evidence that the new environmental governance approach was effective in reducing Amazon forest loss, some research indicates that leakage effects have contributed to increasing land conversion in the Cerrado. In this paper, we contribute to investigating these hypotheses using land market data covering the period from 2001 to 2012. Based on land rent and hedonic valuation theory, we use a first difference panel regression analysis to decompose forestland prices into land rent, conversion costs, and speculative attributes. We then assess whether, where, and to what extent conservation policy shocks affect forestland prices over time. Our measures of speculation and conservation are significant in all our model specifications. Our findings suggest that land prices represent an indicator for spatially and temporally shifting land demand and related speculative behavior, and the presence of conservation policy leakage in Brazil.

When the State Brings Itself Back into GVC: The Case of the Indonesian Palm Oil Pledge

During the last decades the role of the state in governance of Global Value Chains (GVC) for sustainability has been largely ignored. This paper contributes to the re-centering the state in GVC analysis. We provide an analysis of the rise and fall of the Indonesian Palm Oil Pledge (IPOP). IPOP is a commitment of some biggest palm oil companies towards zero-deforestation in Indonesia, but was dissolved after serious critique from the Government of Indonesia (GoI). Our question is: why and how did the GoI decide to put an end to the IPOP? We show that the GoI orchestrated the IPOP’s demise by framing it as a danger to smallholder development, as not acknowledging public standards, and as an illegal cartel. The GoI’s counter-framing re-asserts its sovereignty over producers, rule-making and economic organization. We argue that when a state perceives that when non-state-driven GVC governance threatens its sovereignty over producers, rule-making and economic organization, it will engage in discursive power struggle with non-state actors. More specifically, collective action of non-state actors can particularly trigger a state to engage in discursive power struggle with non-state actors.

Modeling peat- and forestland conversion by oil palm smallholders in Indonesian Borneo

The effect of industrial oil palm expansion on deforestation and peatland conversion in Southeast Asia has been well documented. Despite being the fastest growing producer group by area, the effects of smallholder expansion in contrast is yet to be fully understood. By combining spatial analysis with farm and farmer surveys, this article examines the types of land use changes associated with independent smallholder oil palm expansion in Indonesian Borneo. We furthermore estimate through predictive modeling how plot and smallholder characteristics influence the probability that smallholder plantation establishment involved peat- and/or forestland conversion. Results point to an increasing rate of especially peatland conversion due to rising scarcities of suitable lands on mineral soils. They also demonstrate how oil palm smallholders involved in environmentally detrimental land conversions are less likely to be experienced oil palm farmers and more likely to belong to indigenous groups, be incompliant of sustainability standards and have experienced fire. This highlights the importance of improved peatland management and targeted extension support in smallholder oil palm landscapes to both mitigate and reduce the impact of smallholder oil palm expansion.

Rise and fall of forest loss and industrial plantations in Borneo (2000-2017)

The links between plantation expansion and deforestation in Borneo are debated. We used satellite imagery to map annual loss of old-growth forests, expansion of industrial plantations (oil palm and pulpwood), and their overlap in Borneo from 2001 to 2017. In 17 years, forest area declined by 14% (6.04 Mha), including 3.06 Mha of forest ultimately converted into industrial plantations. Plantations expanded by 170% (6.20 Mha: 88% oil palm; 12% pulpwood). Most forests converted to plantations were cleared and planted in the same year (92%; 2.83 Mha). Annual forest loss generally increased before peaking in 2016 (0.61 Mha) and declining sharply in 2017 (0.25 Mha). After peaks in 2009 and 2012, plantation expansion and associated forest conversion have been declining in Indonesia and Malaysia. Annual plantation expansion is positively correlated with annual forest loss in both countries. The correlation vanishes when we consider plantation expansion versus forests that are cleared but not converted to plantations. The price of crude palm oil is positively correlated with plantation expansion in the following year in Indonesian (not Malaysian) Borneo. Low palm oil prices, wet conditions, and improved fire prevention all likely contributed to reduced 2017 deforestation. Oversight of company conduct requires transparent concession ownership.

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