Since the end of 2000s, many forest-rich countries have engaged into results-based deforestation reduction monitoring under REDD+ mechanisms. A set of methods and tools designed at international level is expected to be transferred to the domestic level in many developing countries, in order to generate information on how these countries contribute to global emissions reduction through local forest landscapes. Using the monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) device as an example, this paper sets out to analyze this knowledge transfer by identifying bottlenecks. It proposes an original analysis that will help to better understand how such knowledge transfers could be improved at the domestic level. Based on empirical case studies related to REDD+ projects in Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, it assesses knowledge transfer and the role of stakeholders involved at multiple levels (global, regional, national and local). For this purpose, we used the Research Integration and Utilization (RIU) model, which is an analytical framework allowing analyses showing how scientific results can be owned, integrated and disseminated to meet specific needs. Results show that there is a weakness in MRV knowledge transfer from global to local levels and back. The MRV knowledge has a strong research background, a weak MRV knowledge integration and a mitigated direct utilization. The RIU model allows us to identify significant weaknesses in the transfer of MRV knowledge, including institutional dysfunction, weak institutional coordination, a lack of integration and reduced utilization of the scientific knowledge produced, despite the creation of coordinating institutions. These weaknesses are due partly to the absence of a common platform between exogenous and endogenous knowledge. To overcome these obstacles, synergies between scientists and indigenous actors should be explored and developed.
Tag: deforestation
Towards performance assessment of subnational forest-based climate change mitigation initiatives
Tropical forests play a central role in reaching the climate change mitigation goals of the Paris agreement. Over the last decade, hundreds of subnational initiatives that aim to reduce deforestation related emissions (REDD+) have been implemented across the tropics which need to be evaluated and monitored. This makes it important to develop and compare different approaches to quantifying impacts on carbon emissions and associated socio-economic trade-offs and synergies.
This thesis compared methods that assess deforestation before and after the start of REDD+, in- and outside REDD+ initiatives, and across different scales. These assessments require (spatial) data on forest area and changes therein, but these data contain uncertainties which influence the REDD+ evaluation results. These uncertainties need to be accounted for in REDD+ assessments. The causes of deforestation differ across and within the different study sites, thus calling for locally tailored approaches when designing REDD+ interventions. Apart from the outcomes of these interventions on forest change, well-being outcomes need to be addressed and assessed too in order not to harm forest-dependent livelihoods.
Incentive structures for policy and institutional mainstreaming of commercial forestry investment sub-projects
The underlying causes of deforestation in the Philippines include policy, institutional and governance issues, such as unstable, confusing and conflicting forest policies and mandates; logging bans as perverse incentives; open-access forest lands due to lack of clear tenure; limited coordination with other sectors; poor monitoring and law enforcement; and the inability of institutions to adapt and carry out effective strategies.The current policy and regulatory framework overseen by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and the Forest Management Bureau (FMB) are largely influenced by extractive-driven systems from the period when Timber License Agreements were the dominant tenure instrument and “underlines the failure to adjust policies and strategies that respond to devolved, holistic, interconnected, and community-managed ecosystems” (Carandang 2008:35).
Prescribed burning and integrated fire management in the Brazilian Cerrado: demonstrated impacts and scale-up potential for emission abatement
Fire management has proven successful in reducing deforestation, preserving biodiversity and mitigating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. After years of zero burning policies in fire-adapted ecosystems, and resulting increases in fire hazards and risks, countries are moving towards integrated fire management (IFM) including prescribed burning (PB). With a primary focus on biodiversity, Brazilian governmental organizations endorsed this paradigm shift in 2014, with the introduction of IFM in a number of protected areas (PA) of the Cerrado. Reducing high intensity mid/late dry season (M/LDS) fires through PB in the early dry season (EDS) has proven successful in other savanna ecosystems, with demonstrated mitigation potential as EDS fires are associated with lower GHG emissions. In the present study, Earth observation data were used to analyze the seasonality of active fires, burned areas and fuel loads. A dynamic performance benchmark (control-treatment paired sample test) was applied to assess the effectiveness of existing IFM activities in promoting emission abatement over the pre-covid period 2014–2019. Compared against the responses of PAs without IFM-PB, the PAs with IFM-PB showed significant increases in EDS fires (+137% hotspots) and EDS burned areas (from a share of 11.2% to 29.5% of the total yearly burned area). Fuel fragmentation through EDS-PB, tracked through calibrated fuel load maps, also led to a 62% reduction in burned areas in the IFM period 2014–2019. Combined M/LDS burned areas decreased from 85.1% of the total yearly burned area to a share of 67.7%. When applying the observed shift in fire seasonality and the effect of burned area reduction to all the PA of the Cerrado for the same period, we estimate an emission abatement potential of 1085 764 tCO2e/y. Given the fact that IFM followed a biodiversity-centred approach in the Cerrado, an emission abatement-centered approach could result in even higher abatement potentials.
Preliminary Reflection on the Opportunities and Challenges of Mangrove Ecosystem Management and Restoration in Cameroon
In Cameroon, regressive changes in mangrove cover have been observed in recent decades. The establishment of human settlements through the development of various activities has subjected natural spaces to various pressures, based on the perceptions inherent in each social group. The drivers of mangrove deforestation are urban sprouting, climate change, poor administrative follow-up, population increase, and economic growth. To overcome this degradation and better manage the ecosystem, some facts based on opportunities and challenges must be assessed. Therefore, some opportunities for mangrove management include the Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries (REDD+) policy, the African forest reforestation initiative (AFR100) projects, the Cameroon mangrove ecosystem restoration and resilence (CAMERR) projects, and the presence of capacity building institutions. Various challenges exist such as limited funds, stakeholders not being fully involved, a lack of data dissemination, and no monitoring of the reforestation sites. To overcome these challenges, the community and stakeholders should be sensitised, village management committees should be created to follow up planted trees and reforestation, and research data should be documented and disseminated.
Restoring deforested drylands for a wetter future – harnessing trees for credits, climate and water
Drylands covered two-fifths of the Earth’s land surface in 2015 (Bastin et al., 2017), with trees growing in one-third of these areas (FAO, 2019). This area of drylands has expanded by almost 1% per year since 2015 because of large-scale drying and land degradation at low and middle latitudes (Prăvălie et al., 2019). Thus, conservation and restoration of drylands are needed. Restoration is often performed with a focus on the carbon sequestration potential that can be funded by carbon markets (Bajaj, 2022). In contrast, the role of trees and forests in water cycling has been relatively neglected (Ellison et al., 2012, 2017; Sheil, 2014).
Shifting cultivation and deforestation
About half of tropical deforestation is commonly explained by the expansion of traditional agriculture (shifting cultivation). This article first questions the share of responsibility assigned to traditional agriculture — it may well be overestimated because of unclear definitions, uncertain estimates, and potential political biases. Second, a simple framework based on a theory of land rent capture is developed to explain agricultural expansion. The framework is applied in the study of recent changes in shifting cultivators’ adaptations in a lowland rainforest area in Sumatra, Indonesia. Increased rubber planting and expansion into primary forest are seen as a response to increased rubber profitability and (expected) land scarcity, and as a race for property rights. Government land claims have had significant multiplier effects on forest clearing through changes in farmers’ expectations and in initiating a self-reinforcing land race.
Use, value, and desire: ecosystem services under agricultural intensification in a changing landscape in West Kalimantan (Indonesia)
A fundamental challenge is to understand and navigate trade-offs between ecosystem services (ES) in dynamic landscapes and to account for interactions between local people and broad-scale drivers, such as agricultural intensification. Many analyses of ES trade-offs rely on static mapping and biophysical indicators while disregarding the multiple uses, values, and desires for ES (UVD-ES) that local people associate with their changing landscapes. Here, a participatory UVD-ES framework was applied to assess differences in the use, values, and desire of ES between three zones with different land-use intensities (with pre-frontier, frontier, and post-frontier landscapes) in West Kalimantan (Indonesia). The analysis revealed that (1) almost the full suite of ES uses has become destabilized as a result of agricultural intensification; (2) ES more closely associated with agricultural intensification were largely desired by local people yet they still valued a diversity of traditional ES, such as those derived from the provision of non-timber forest products, fish, and other ES associated with non-material aspects including those tied to traditional culture; (3) the mismatch in used ES versus valued ES increased with agricultural intensification due to a decrease in the flow of non-timber forest products, aquatic, regulating, and non-material (cultural) ES. Together, exploring UVD-ES patterns in a participatory way helped to reveal locally relevant social-ecological drivers of ES and a multidimensional perspective of ES trade-offs. Our UVD-ES framework offers an opportunity to foster participation as a way to reconnect global environmental research agendas with local and regional landscape contexts.
Payment for environmental services to reduce deforestation: Do the positive effects last?
Are the forest conservation practices sustained after Payment for Environmental Services (PES) programmes end? Using a sample of 268 (former) PES recipients and non-recipients from the Budongo-Bugoma PES programme in Western Uganda, we employ the before-after-control–intervention (difference-in-difference) approach to estimate the PES programme outcome on their privately owned forests. PES is associated with less deforestation during the operational period, but the link has vanished four years after programme termination. We label this weak permanence, i.e., PES recipients abandon the induced practices soon after the programme ended, but the gains (relatively higher forest cover) during the operational period are maintained. We also find that household and contextual variables are important in explaining PES permanence: low levels of agricultural land and remoteness from agricultural markets weaken PES permanence. Therefore monetary payments alone may be insufficient for lasting forest conservation. Integrating PES with other approaches, such as climate-smart agriculture may result in more permanent reductions in deforestation.
Mapping deforestation and recovery of tropical montane forests of East Africa
Deforestation poses a major threat to the tropical montane forest ecosystems of East Africa. Montane forests provide key and unique ecological and socio-economic benefits to the local communities and host diverse flora and fauna. There is evidence of ongoing deforestation and forest clearance in these montane forests although estimates diverge among different sources suggesting rates of 0.4%–3% yr−1. Quantifying deforestation rates and forest disturbance is critical to design conservation and sustainable management policies for forest management. This study quantified the rate of deforestation and forest recovery over the last three decades for the Mau Forest Complex and Mount Elgon forests in Kenya and Uganda using Landsat time-series satellite imagery. With the analysis, classification accuracies of 86.2% and 90.5% (kappa 0.81 and 0.88) were achieved for the Mau Forest Complex and the Mt Elgon forests, respectively. 21.9% (88,493 ha) of the 404,660 ha of Mau forest was lost at an annual rate of −0.82% yr−1 over the period between 1986 and 2017. More positively, 18.6% (75,438 ha) of the forest cover that was disturbed during the same period and is currently undergoing recovery. In Mt Elgon forest, 12.5% (27,201 ha) of 217,268 ha of the forest cover was lost to deforestation at an annual rate of −1.03% yr−1 for the period between 1984–2017 and 27.2% (59,047 ha) of the forest cover disturbed is undergoing recovery. The analysis further demonstrated agriculture (both smallholder and commercial) was the main driver of forest cover loss in Mau forest, accounting for 81.5% (70,612 ha) of the deforestation, of which 13.2% was due to large scale and 68.3% was related to the smallholders. For the Mt Elgon forest, agriculture was also the main driver accounting for 63.2% (24,077 ha) of deforestation followed by the expansion of human settlements that contributed to 14.7% (5,597 ha) of forest loss. This study provides accurate and novel estimates of the rate of deforestation for the Mau forest complex and Mt Elgon forest ecosystems. These rates are higher than previously estimated and recent deforestation has been identified, which provides a quantitative basis for forest restoration programs and to design conservation policies.