WWF: Paper Dispenser

      

Advertising Agency: Saatchi & Saatchi, Copenhagen, Denmark
Creative Director: Simon Wooller
Art Directors / Copywriters: Cliff Kagawa Holm, Silas Jansson
Release: April 2007

What is REDD+?

    
The annual United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) climate talks have started today in Durban, South Africa. The 17^th Conference of the Parties (COP17) will last two weeks with the aim to facilitate a global agreement to tackle anthropogenic climate change. Forests are one of the main agenda items for the COP in the form of  Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD). This post aims to provide a short introduction to REDD, the world of forests and deforestation from an international policy perspective.

According to the definition of the UN-REDD Program, REDD is “an effort to create a financial value for the carbon stored in forests, offering incentives for developing countries to reduce emissions from forested lands and invest in low-carbon paths to sustainable development”.  REDD gradually evolved to REDD+ where the plus indicates “the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks”. REDD was first introduced to the agenda of the UNFCCC in December 2005 at its eleventh session. As a result of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the UNFCCC entered into force in 1994, signed by 194 countries, with the ultimate goal of “stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic (human induced) interference with the climate system.

The Little REDD Book, published by the Global Canopy Programme in 2008, is one of the best introductory readings if someone wants to dig a little more into the world of REDD(+). REDD(+) is a complex mechanisms for which a number of issues are still actively debated. Drawn from the Little REDD Book I will briefly discuss some of the most important aspects and challenges of REDD(+), which also shows the complexity of the subject.

Scope: Concerns the activities included (REDD or REDD+), participating countries, and different carbon pools such as above ground biomass, below ground biomass, soil carbon and/or all terrestrial carbon.

Reference levels: Relates to the measurement of emission reductions from REDD(+). If REDD(+) used for meeting binding or voluntary emission reduction commitments of countries there must be a system to measure exact emission reductions. Thus reference levels basically define “the period and scale against which the activities within scope are measured”. Options currently discuss include sub-national, national or global (in terms of scale) and historic baseline, current or projected baseline (in terms of reference period).

Distribution: relates to “how the benefits of those reductions will be allocated”.  While the majority of UNFCCC countries promote “compensation directly in line with a [country]’s own actions” others suggest that “some of these benefits should be redistributed to [countries] other than those generating the emissions reductions” (e.g. “allocate funds to historically low emitters who may emit at some point into the future” as a preventive measure).

Financing: addresses the “where the money comes from” question. Possible alternatives include financing through a voluntary fund, Official Development Assistance (ODA) – although most developing countries call for “new and additional funds”, a direct-market based mechanism (where emission reductions are traded on the market, or a market-linked mechanism. (A basic understanding of emissions trading and markets may help grasping this topic better.)

  

While the exact details of a REDD(+) mechanism are still debated, countries of the UNFCCC agree that a mechanisms must be set up to reduce emissions from forests, a sector that amounts to almost 20% of global warming emissions and thus can clearly not be ignored. Finding a system, however, that is suitable and acceptable to all the 194 member countries of the UNFCCC is challenging. There are, nonetheless, initiatives already in place (such as the UN-REDD Programme or the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility) with the aim to pilot REDD+ projects and prepare developing rainforest countries (with appropriate policies and technologies) for the implementation of a future REDD+ mechanism.

   

Community forestry in the Amazon

  
Community forestry usually refers to a forest management system where local communities and/or indigenous people are involved in forestry activities with the aim to develop sustainable forest use. Community forest management can be a great tool in achieving the combined benefits of forest conservation, rural development and poverty reduction. There are numerous community forest management programs all around the world, however, success rates depend on a number of factors, and most importantly, it seems, on tenure sequrity. 

The Overseas Development Institute (ODI), in 2008, published the report ‘Community Forestry in the Amazon: the unsolved challenge of forests and the poor’ with the aim to assess efforts put into the establishment of community forest programs in the Amazon region and the reasons for their high rate of failure.

One of the issues mentioned is the ignorance of traditional focus on rural procedures on agricultural production and the extraction of Non Timber Forest Products (NTFPs). Ignoring the cultural preference of horizontal organizational structures and activities with immediate economic returns, implementing organizations tend to push vertical organizational structures and focus on long-term economic gains. As a result, these programs often fail due to lack of support from local communities. Another problematic area discussed in the report is the communication gap that can occur between professional foresters and local communities. Moreover, most community forestry programs require significant subsidies to cover operational costs for a substantial period of time and revoking financial support can lead to almost immediate collapse.  

Nonetheless, according to the ODA it is not the principle of forest management by communities that is in question but the current framework. To achieve success, the report argues, “a clearer vision of the aspirations of indigenous communities in the region is needed”, which “will help to define more coherent and realistic policies which promote the effective use of forests by smallholders as an important input for the sustainable development of the region and as a means of reducing rural poverty”.
    

100 years old farmer in the Juma Reserve in the Brazilian Amazon
Photo: Neil Palmer (CIAT)
Source: CIFOR Forests Blog

     

Uncontacted Amazon Tribe: First ever aerial footage

  

A previously unknown indigenous group was discovered deep in the Amazon rainforest, in one of the dense jungles of the Javari Valley Indigenous Reserve in western Brazil. The aerial footage, below, was released by officials of Brazil’s Indian Affairs Agency (FUNAI), who initially discovered the tribe during examination of satellite images of rain forest clearings. They estimate that the tribe might number as many as 200 people.  

   

The Javari Reserve is home to the largest concentration of uncontacted tribes in the entire world, with at least eight uncontacted indigenous communities, and perhaps as many as fourteen, inhabiting the upland forests.

Rainforests on Fire

   
In his 2003 article, Fire Science for Rainforests, Mark A. Cochrane explains that while tropical forest fires have never been unprecedented, the problem is the frequency with which they are nowadays being burned. Fires in tropical forests have return intervals of hundreds or even thousands of years. As a result, tropical rainforest are evolutionarily not adapted to current patterns of fires, with thin barks that provide little protection even against low intensity fires.

Most fires in tropical rainforests are associated with forest edges and are mostly arise from ‘slash and burn’ practices getting out of control. Forest edges, borders of forested and deforested land, generally have increased mortality of trees, decreased living biomass and increased fuel loads (dry wood debris), which makes these forests susceptible to fire. While due to their high sub-canopy humidity extensive undamaged forests make large forest fires almost impossible, current levels of fragmentation in tropical forests (with scattered deforested areas) make large areas of forestland threatened. In addition, extensive selective logging (when only certain trees are removed but in large numbers) significantly decreases forest biomass and can thus also increase fire susceptibility.

Cochrane points out that frequent tropical forest fires lead to a vicious cycle where forests thinned by fire transpire less water, which leads to lower humidity and as a result increased future fire probability. Instead of applying fire knowledge from other parts of the world, Cochrane says, to prevent the continuous loss of large areas of tropical forests “current fire knowledge needs to be interpreted in the context of tropical forests and, where necessary, added to, by defining the mechanisms by which fire and ecosystem processes interact in these forests."

Photo: Daniel Beltra,
www.danielbeltra.com

 

Stop the catastrophe - Greenpeace

  

Saatchi & Saatchi

Carbon sequestration by forests

Following on from my earlier post on deforestation and climate change, I will now discuss the role of trees and forests in mitigating anthropogenic climate change in more detail.

The potential key role of forests in mitigation of anthropogenic climate change is widely acknowledged both by scientists and policy makers. International policies to ensure the protection and sustanable management of forests are emerging rapidly, with increasing focus on reforestation and afforestation activities. However, carbon sequestration by forests is a complex mechanism, effected by numerous factors, which makes the accurate calculation of potential and actual carbon sequestration challenging. This issue is especially relevant for policies and mechanisms that allow countries to untilize forest carbon sequestration to meet their emission reduction targets as failure to properly calculate carbon sequestration can lead to inappropriate global emission reductions.

Forests play a crucial role in the global carbon cycle. Through photosynthesis they assimilate carbon dioxide (CO2) and fix carbon (C) in their biomass releasing oxygen (O2) as a waste product. Forest ecosystems store an estimated 638 gigatonnes (Gt) of carbon, 283 Gt of which in forest biomass alone, which is approximately 50% more than all the carbon in the atmosphere. This makes forests the single largest terrestrial carbon sinks (1). As a result, minor changes in forest ecosystems can have great impacts on the carbon cycle and therefore on the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere (2). According to some estimates, the terrestrial biosphere currently sequesters around 3 billion tons of anthropogenic carbon annually, 20-30% of global anthropogenic CO2 emissions (3). Forests, however, can switch between being a net sink of carbon to being a net source, depending on succession stage, disturbance or management regime.

While the role of undisturbed forests as climate protectors is not questioned, it is hard to determine both the forest carbon sink and reservoir that can be managed and the exact amount of carbon forests at any point may remove from the atmosphere (4). As Canadell & Raupach (2008) describes, the upper limit of carbon sequestration can be estimated by the carbon emitted from historical land conversion. If 75% of this came from forest conversion, they suggest, and therefore can be returned by reforestation over the course of the 21st century, a mitigation potential of about 1.5 Pg carbon annually can be calculated. This would reduce atmospheric CO2 concentration by 40 to 70 parts per million (ppm) by 2100. While these numbers are very imprecise, the method is still useful for providing estimates of global forest sequestration potential.

At a more localized scale, however, there can be great variability in sequestration potential of different forest types as well as between natural and production or plantation forests. This makes the calculation of sequestration potential challenging, as models and methods should be adjusted to specific forests and environments (5). For example, Vyskot et al. (2011) notes that, depending on various factors such as site conditions or species composition, the average biomass of production forests only reaches about 20-60% of biomass in natural forests. 

Finally, carbon sequestration by forests can be affected by a number of physical, chemical and biological factors, such as climate warming, the concentration of CO2 or ozone in the atmosphere, respiration rates, nitrogen deposition, biological invasions, or management regime. This means that in order to provide accurate estimates of sequestration potential of forests over time, not only their present state but potential future environmental changes should also be considered. 

   

The Prince's Rainforests Project

  
The PRP’s work - that was largely concluded in Oslo in May 2010 when over fifty Governments launched the REDD+ Partnership - focused on two very specific aims. The first, to identify appropriate incentives to encourage rainforest nations to slow their deforestation rates. The second, to raise awareness of the link between rainforests and climate change.

The PRP is now part of The Prince’s Charities’ International Sustainability Unit, a programme of work to help build consensus on how to develop durable solutions which will underpin the mechanisms required to meet the challenges of climate change and natural resource depletion.

As part of the project an interactive rainforest booklet was published to raise awareness of the importance of rainforest protection. Click here to access the online booklet.

Featured pages of the PRP's interactive online booklet

High gold price triggers destruction of forests of the Peruvian Amazon

     
In an October 11, 2011 article the Mongabay reported that the climbing price of gold on international markets has triggered substantial increase in rainforest destruction in the Peruvian Amazon.

The article points out that while gold mining in the Amazon is probably older even than the Incas, the use of motorized equipment for forest clearing is relatively new, leading to rapid and large scale deforestation around gold mines, visible even from outer space.

Rocketing gold prices of recent years make gold mining more profitable than virtually any other work, especially for unskilled labor. To avoid competition, miners have spread out from traditional mining areas, reaching further into the rainforest, often starting operations before acquiring necessary environmental permissions. Approximately 200 migrants a day flow into the region to engage in gold mining activities.  

The situation got so serious that the Environmental Ministry is close to declaring an environmental emergency in the region although the failure of similar emergency measures passed two years ago questions the government’s ability to effectively address the crisis.
  

Aerial photo of a gold mine in the Peruvian Amazon
Source: mongabay.com

Deforestation and the Maya

   

Literature is abundant on the collapse of the Mayan civilization - during the ninth century A.D. - ranging in focus from foreign invasion and social turmoil to disease epidemics, climate change and collapse of trade. One of the most widely accepted theories is that human induced drought conditions played a key role in bringing about the abandonment of the once flourishing Mayan cities. This view is supported by the article of Oglesby et al. (2009), Collapse of the Maya: Could deforestation have contributed?, which argues that major and prolonged drought conditions were the main factor that led to the rapid decline of the Maya as water resources were key for their survival, especially during the long dry season. Nonetheless, the article acknowledges that the collapse may have been brought about by a combination of factors where social and political circumstances may also have played a role.  While to some extent these drought conditions could have resulted form natural variability, Oglesby et al. argues that deforestation is likely to have played a key role.

The Mayan civilization had by 600 B.C. significantly altered the landscape of present day northern Guatemala and have cut down a large proportion of the forest of the area to accommodate agricultural expansion. By 900 A.D. most of the forest was gone. The peak of the Mayan civilization, between 600 and 850 A.D., was followed by a drastic decline and eventual collapse in little more than a century. Oglesby et al. notes that the only cities where humans survived the collapse were the few with stable sources of drinking water instead of dependence on surface reservoirs for water, a feature of the majority of Mayan settlements.

 

Research around the Holmul river that runs along many of the major Mayan cities suggests that between 750 and 850 A.D. the river either dried up or became very swampy.  This correlates with other research that indicates major drought at 750 A.D. as well as intense multi-year droughts between 810 and 910 A.D. The cause of these droughts is still widely debated. Some attributes it to natural climatic variability while others advocate the notion of human induced vegetation change. According to Oglesby et al. it is most likely a combination of the two. They show that deforestation of Mesoamerica has major impacts on temperatures and precipitation which, considering the almost complete deforestation by the Maya, can not be ignored. While effects of deforestation on temperatures and rainfall patterns can be observed both in the dry and the wet seasons they are considerably stronger in the wet season. The Maya depended on storage of water from the wet season to use during the dry season. Therefore, Oglesby et al. states, reduced rainfall and increased temperatures during the wet season may have been a bigger stress factor than more pronounced drought conditions during the dry season and might have eventually led to the rapid collapse of the Mayan civilization.  

    

Inspiring biodiversity campaign

    

Nicolas Hulot Foundation
Source: http://ezquara.com/

Revolutionary technology for forest monitoring

    
A recent article in Yale Environment 360, by Rhett Butler, introduces a new imaging system, the AToMS (or Airborne Taxonomic Mapping System), first tested this summer above the Amazon rainforest in Peru, which has a great potential to revolutionize forest research and could play a key role in forest preservation across the world. The system produces three-dimensional pictures of forests, showing among other things the species they contain and the amount of carbon they hold. The AToMS creates images by deploying a pair of lasers that send 400,000 pulses per second towards the ground as well as an imaging spectrometer that is able to show the chemical and light reflecting properties of individual trees; all this at incredible speed. The system thus can provide vast amount of information of previously unexplored forests.
 
In addition, Rhett points out, Google Earth (introduced in 2005) has also been increasingly used for forest monitoring. First utilized for monitoring purposes by Rebecca Moore, a Google employee, to monitor logging around her hometown in California, Google Earth technology is now widely employed by scientists for their research and for communication with the public. The software can be downloaded for free from Google.

Below are some spectacular images produced by AToMS.

Source: Yale Environment 360

Think before you print

    
The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has introduced a new file format to raise awareness of the global deforestation crisis.
 
"The WWF format is a PDF that cannot be printed out. It’s a simple way to avoid unnecessary printing. So here’s your chance to save trees and help the environment. Decide for yourself which documents don't need printing out – then simply save them as WWF."
 
The software can be downloaded for free at http://www.saveaswwf.com/en/.

Vanishing biodiversity of the Amazon Rainforest

Golden lion tamarin
Conservation Status: Endangered
(source:http://modernconservativehistory.blogspot.com)

Three toed sloth
Conservation status: Endangered
(source: Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute)

Hyacinth macaw parrot
Conservation status: Endangered
(source: http://www.free-pet-wallpapers.com)

Jaguar
Conservation Status: Threatened
(source: http://a-z-animals.com)

Vanishing rainforests, disappearing species

    
Loss of biodiversity is widely noted as one of the most important negative effects of deforestation. In this post I will briefly explain how tropical deforestation effects biodiversity and why we should be worried about it. I will do so mainly through summarizing a great article by Bradshaw et al. (2009) ‘Tropical turmoil: a biodiversity tragedy in progress’. 

One of the most imporant drivers of biodiversity loss in tropical regions is loss of habitat through the distruction of rainforests. Bradshaw et al (2009) predicts this driver to exceed the effects of climate change, invasive species, and overexploitation even in their worst case scenarios. Even thought tropical forests only represent 7% of Earth’s land surface, they provide habitat for 60% of all know species of our planet. 20 of the 34 global biodiversity hotspots are found in the tropics.  

While the loss of one or a few species may not seem such a huge problem for some, extinctions can have cascading effects leading to subsequent co-extinctions and disturbance of ecological balance. Most flowering plants in tropical rainforests are pollinated by animals. Bradshaw et al. (2009) explains that the number of bird species is predicted to decline by 13% by 2100 with a devastating effect on seed dispersal in many regions. An estimated one-third of the human diet in tropical countries comes from insect pollinated plants and the loss of pollinators may also have an effect outside of forests, on neighboring agricultural lands and can potentially cause decline in yields. In addition, some rainforest predator species play important roles in pest control on farms adjacent to forested areas. 

Compared to extinctions from “natural” causes such as gradual environmental change, newly established competitive interactions, or occasional catastrophic events, human action is implicated in a 100- to 10000-fold increase in extinction rates (Bradshaw et al, 2009). According to Pimm and Raven (2000) an estimated 10000 to 10 million species now become extinct each decade. In addition, they estimate that 40% of the species in Myers’ 25 biodiversity hotspots may go extinct as a result of tropical deforestation alone, with 0.1 to 0.3% of all tropical forest species disappearing annually. This, some scientists argue, could mean the arrival of the sixth known mass extinction event in Earth’s history.

Beautiful video...

Protecting the Amazon rainforest can get bloody

    

In May, 2011, Brazilian rainforest activist José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva and his wife Maria do Espírito Santo were shot dead near their home in Para State, in the Amazon. The couple had received numerous death threat before the murder for their fight against illegal loggers and ranchers. 

Da Silva had predicted his death just six month before the May assassination. In a speech at a TED event in November 2010 he said: "I could be here today talking to you and in one month you will get the news that I disappeared. I will protect the forest at all costs. That is why I could get a bullet in my head at any moment … because I denounce the loggers and charcoal producers, and that is why they think I cannot exist. [People] ask me, 'are you afraid?' Yes, I'm a human being, of course I am afraid. But my fear does not silence me. As long as I have the strength to walk I will denounce all of those who damage the forest."