deforestation Archives - Page 22 of 143 - Resilient Landscapes (RL)

Agroforestry and sustainable woodfuel: Experiences from the Yangambi landscape in DRC

Key messages

This brief describes the first efforts to integrate agroforestry with charcoal production in the Yangambi tropical forest landscape.
Activities resulted in both increased food crop production and reforestation, as well as the establishment of producer-led local associations and greater collaboration between communities and local authorities.
Demonstrating the benefits of agroforestry systems as a source of woodfuel, along with capacity-strengthening activities, are critical to the successful adoption of activities by communities, as is ensuring that all activities are participatory and inclusive in nature.
Local land tenure and rights must be well understood, as well as how gender dynamics and cultural norms may impact uptake.
Finally, understanding local governance systems and social norms is fundamental to ensuring sustainable results.

Deforestation and its potential disruption of the weather patterns of the Democratic Republic of the Congo: Insights from the Kahuzi-Biega National Park landscape

Key messages

Regions surrounding the Kahuzi-Biega National Park (KBNP) and other areas of South Kivu Province in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo have been losing their natural forests for decades.
There is a positive correlation between deforestation and CO2 emissions. Our research shows that deforestation increases temperature and negatively impacts rainfall, although not significantly.
Deforestation and its effects on the local climate are very likely to disrupt local agricultural practices and severely impact the unique biological diversity of the region.
Understanding the important role of forests in regulating climate not only helps to develop appropriate climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies but also to attain better biodiversity conservation and food security, and to go beyond just carbon sequestration services.

Potentials for “results-based payments” in the forest sector under the Paris Agreement

The forest sector contributes to high emissions worldwide through the loss of historically built-up carbon stocks, mainly from deforestation and forest degradation. The REDD+ approach aims at compensating developing countries for efforts to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, to maintain and increase forest carbon stocks or to manage forests sustainably. This report examines how, and under which circumstances, different forms of results-based financing are suitable for reducing emissions and enhancing removals in the forest sector in the context of different countries and mitigation measures.

Forty-year multi-scale land cover change and political ecology data reveal a dynamic and regenerative process of forests in Peruvian Indigenous Territories

This article explores deforestation and reforestation dynamics over 415,749 hectares of 25 titled Indigenous Community Lands (ICLs) in the Peruvian Amazon over forty years at three scales: total area, regions, and communities. We focus on ICLs as the territorial unit of analysis, as they are increasingly discussed regarding their importance for conservation. Additionally indigenous communities (ICs) are a too-marginalized group in the Amazon that merit more attention. Analyses of this kind are often short-term and use only large-scale Earth Observation methodologies. We use a multi-method approach linking remote sensing with ground verification, and qualitative historical political ecology work with ICs. We find that overall accumulated deforestation was low at 5%, but that when reforestation is considered, net deforestation was only 3.5%. At the community level deforestation and afforestation dynamics are complex, except for one period that indicates a macro state driver in the region. Results suggest inadequate accounting for forest regeneration in deforestation analyses and challenge the notion that presenting stakeholders with accumulated forest loss values is helpful in tropical areas where forests and people are dynamic. Furthermore, our work with communities highlights that categorizing them and their lands as pro-environment or not in general terms is unhelpful for determining fund flows to ICLs for environmental or development purposes.

To what extent is REDD + integrated into land-use sectors driving deforestation? Insights from Cameroon

Environmental policies ought to be integrated into economic sectors for successful outcomes. We assess to what extent Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD +) is integrated into land-use sectors driving deforestation in Cameroon. REDD + governance has been extensively examined, including the challenges of a multisectoral approach to tackle the drivers of deforestation, especially those lying outside the forestry sector. Yet, these studies have focussed on cross-sectoral coordination, giving little attention to factors such as political will and the adequacy of policy instruments for integration. We amend and apply an innovative framework for environmental policy integration to conduct a comprehensive assessment of REDD + policy integration in Cameroon, a Congo Basin country experiencing increasing deforestation rates due to agriculture, husbandry, infrastructure development and mining. Drawing from policy documents and in-depth interviews with key informants, we found out that territorial battles between ministries, insecurity about their understanding of forest matters in different land-use sectors, and dysfunctional policy instruments have undermined REDD + policy integration. Our study suggests that REDD + integration into land-use sectors would be enhanced by informing stakeholders about their roles in the REDD + process, completing and legitimising the forest zoning plan, addressing loopholes in environmental assessment regulations, and alleviating inconsistencies in land-use rules. These instruments would be reinforced with an economic tool internalising carbon costs in projects generating forest emissions.

Beyond reducing deforestation: impacts of conservation programs on household livelihoods

Understanding why forest conservation initiatives succeed or fail is essential to designing cost-effective programs at scale. In this study, we investigate direct and indirect impact mechanisms of a REDD+ project that was shown to be effective in reducing deforestation during the early years of its implementation in the Transamazon region, an area with historically high deforestation rates. Using counterfactual impact evaluation methods applied to survey and remote-sensing data, we assess the impact of the project over 2013-2019, i.e., from its first year until two years after its end. Based on the Theory of Change, we focus on land use and socioeconomic outcomes likely to have been affected by changes in deforestation brought about by the initiative. Our findings highlight that forest conservation came at the expense of pastures rather than cropland and that the project induced statistically greater agrobiodiversity on participating farms. Moreover, we find that the project encouraged the development of alternative livelihood activities that required less area for production and generated increased income. These results suggest that conservation programs, that combine payments conditional on forest conservation with technical assistance and support to farmers for the adoption of low-impact activities, can manage to slow down deforestation in the short term are likely to induce profound changes in production systems, which can be expected to have lasting effects.

High-resolution maps show that rubber causes substantial deforestation

Understanding the effects of cash crop expansion on natural forest is of fundamental importance. However, for most crops there are no remotely sensed global maps1, and global deforestation impacts are estimated using models and extrapolations. Natural rubber is an example of a principal commodity for which deforestation impacts have been highly uncertain, with estimates differing more than fivefold1,2,3,4. Here we harnessed Earth observation satellite data and cloud computing5 to produce high-resolution maps of rubber (10 m pixel size) and associated deforestation (30 m pixel size) for Southeast Asia. Our maps indicate that rubber-related forest loss has been substantially underestimated in policy, by the public and in recent reports6,7,8. Our direct remotely sensed observations show that deforestation for rubber is at least twofold to threefold higher than suggested by figures now widely used for setting policy4. With more than 4 million hectares of forest loss for rubber since 1993 (at least 2 million hectares since 2000) and more than 1 million hectares of rubber plantations established in Key Biodiversity Areas, the effects of rubber on biodiversity and ecosystem services in Southeast Asia could be extensive. Thus, rubber deserves more attention in domestic policy, within trade agreements and in incoming due-diligence legislation.

Glasgow forest declaration needs new modes of data ownership

Commitments made at COP26 in Glasgow shine a spotlight on how changes in global tree cover are defined, monitored and accounted for. Signed by 141 countries, the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use1 commits signatories to collectively “halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030 while delivering sustainable development”. This declaration recognizes that land use and land management are responsible for an estimated 23% of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and that any plausible scenario to limit global warming to 1.5 °C by 2100 must maintain and expand tree cover2. It also recognizes that sustainable land use requires transformative international-to-local action covering relevant global production and consumption systems while simultaneously empowering smallholders, Indigenous peoples and local communities2. However, timely and effective monitoring of such transformative actions requires improved, open and shared data and new collective modes of ownership for forest information.

Emission Reductions Program for Addressing Drivers of Deforestation and Forest Degradation: An Insight from the Terai Arc Landscape in Southern Nepal

As part of the REDD+ program, for the past decade, Nepal has been working with the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility on its Emission Reductions Program (ER-Program). The ER-Program was designed for a program area covering 13 districts in the Terai Arc Landscape. Approved in 2018, the Emission Reductions Program Document (ERPD) identified six major drivers of deforestation and forest degradation in the program area: unsustainable and illegal harvesting of timber and fuelwood; overgrazing; forest fires; encroachment and conversion of forest land for other land uses; resettlement; and infrastructure development. The ER-Program aims to address these drivers and help the conservation and enhancement of existing forest carbon stock through the sustainable management of forest resources. To do so, seven program interventions have been designed, ranging from localized and improved community-based forest management, through private sector engagement in the forestry sector and alternative energy promotion, to integrated land-use planning. The February 2021 Emission Reductions Payment Agreement (ERPA) between the Government of Nepal and the World Bank has paved the way for official implementation of these interventions on the ground. These interventions unlock the potentiality of up to USD 45 million in results-based payments for emission reductions of up to nine million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2025. Accordingly, the ER-Program is expected to address the drivers of emissions-causing deforestation and forest degradation and enhance forest carbon stock, ultimately paving the way for results-based payments for future emissions reductions.

Recent forest and land-use policy changes in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo: Are they truly transformational?

This paper analyses the policy changes occurring in the forest and palm oil sectors of Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, through the lens of the transformational change concept. The aim is to first examine whether Sabah is transforming and, if so, to identify the determinants enabling or hindering the change. To determine if Sabah is transforming, we used two criteria: – (i) an ambitious change in the policy framework, that promotes forest conservation and sustainable use, and is moving away from business-as-usual activities; and (ii) the level of implementation of the policies that we identified as supporting transformational change. We found that Sabah very likely did intend to transform. We made this conclusion based on comparing changes in policies occurring in Sabah, and we decided if it is ambitious by primarily comparing Sabah’s policies with other Malaysian states, the federal government, and internationally. We showed that: (i) Sabah decided to use voluntary international certification standards (private market instruments) like FSC and RSPO, while the other Malaysian states did not; (ii) they decided to protect more forest compared to national and international targets; and (iii) Sabah is an early mover as the state is one of the first in the world to adopt the RSPO Jurisdictional Approach. But intention needs to be followed by implementation, and this is where the state falls short. The policies in Sabah were not fully implemented because of the patronage system where the more powerful actors used their power to continue with business-as-usual activities, there is frequent political turnover in Sabah, and the state faced difficulty in meeting international standards. Our research shows that local leadership and a local transformational change coalition (civil society actively working in Sabah) mainly prompted the transformational change, although the promises of economic gains and better reputation also played a role. We conclude by emphasising the change must be made more compelling for political leaders, as part of a broader institutional structure, not only through the narrow focus on reducing deforestation but through the development of a more sustainable and equitable national economy, and that consumer countries should play a role in reducing pressures on forest by providing incentives to a state that manages its natural resources sustainably.

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