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Cut less, leave longer: decades of data show we are over-exploiting tropical rainforests


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We are logging more than can be sustained by tropical forests. Plinio Sist, Fourni par l'auteur
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Tropical rainforests currently cover 1070 million hectares of the world’s surface. More than 90% of them are located in three regions: Central Africa, in the Congo Basin; South America, mostly in the Amazon; and in Southeast Asia, in Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea.

It is estimated that 400 million hectares of these forests are currently given over to timber production. But our research over many decades shows the rules that govern timber harvesting in tropical forest – currently based on logging intensity and cutting cycle – do not allow for the long-term recovery of the timber volume being harvested from these ecosystems.

These observations question the very foundations of the so-called “sustainable management” of these forests, and indicates that we will see further degradation of the planet’s last timber-producing tropical rainforests. It is therefore urgent that we seek out new sources of timber. Natural forests alone will not be able to meet current and future demand.

The principles of tropical silviculture – the management of forests to meet the needs of diverse groups and industries – must also be completely revised.

No time to recover

Timber harvesting in tropical forests concerns only a very small number of trees of commercial interest: one to three trees per hectare in Africa, five to seven in the Amazon, and eight in Southeast Asia. Just a few species, including ipe, cumaru, okoumé and sapelli are exploited worldwide.

Among these, only the largest trees of more more than 50 to 80 cm in diameter are felled and harvested. The forest is then left to rest, generally for 25 to 35 years, depending on a specific country’s legislation. These rest periods, known as “rotations”, should theoretically allow the forest to recover the stock of harvested timber.

But our data shows that, in reality, these resting periods are vastly underestimated.

Since the early 1980s, CIRAD and its partners have set up experimental plots to monitor tropical forest dynamics in order to assess the effects of selective logging on the reconstitution of the timber stock. This information now allows us to simulate the trajectories of exploited tropical rainforests according to the harvesting intensity, but also other variables – including rainfall and soil type.

Using this information, we calculated the reconstitution of a forests’s biomass, the commercial volume of timber and the evolution of biodiversity within the Amazon basin to highlight significant differences within the same region.

We found that, in general, the rotation times of 25-35 years in force in most tropical countries are insufficient to fully reconstitute the timber volume removed. On the other hand, biodiversity and biomass seem to recover fairly quickly within 20-25 years, after which more than 80% of biodiversity remains at the level of the pre-harvest level.

Unsustainable production

In the Brazilian Amazon, current forest protection legislation is based on a 35-year cycle, with an harvesting intensity of 15-20 m3 per hectare and an initial proportion of commercial species of 20%. At this rate, and considering a harvesting area of 35 million hectares, the level of production cannot be maintained beyond one harvesting cycle of 35 years, and will then decline each year until the resources are depleted.

Only by reducing harvesting intensity by half and a 65-year cutting cycle would ensure sustainable and constant timber production; however, in this situation, only 31% of current demand could be met.

In Southeast Asia, the cutting cycle period is 20 to 30 years, and logging intensities in primary forest, on average 80m3 per hectare, can exceed 100m3 per hectare. But data from forest dynamics monitoring indicate that only an intensity of 60m³ per hectare every 40 years would ensure sustainable and consistent production over time.

Finally, in Central Africa, the recovery of the stock of timber removed 25 years after logging is only 40%, suggesting a recovery of barely 50% over a 30-year rotation.

A new system for harvesting timber

The idea behind tropical silviculture, designed more than half a century ago, is that natural tropical forests are capable of producing timber in a sustained manner. In light of our results, this position must be completely revised.

The monitoring of tropical forests dynamics after logging shows that, in most tropical countries, they will not be able to meet the growing market demand for timber within 30 years, according to the rules established by forestry legislation.

In the vast majority of cases, true sustainability would require a considerable reduction in the harvesting intensity and a significant increase in the duration of logging cycles, which compromises the economic sustainability of selective logging in the current legislation system.

Natural tropical forests can no longer be perceived as a simple source of timber: the environmental services they produce should also be taken into account. For example, we could consider pricing timber from natural forests higher than that from plantations, with intended use linked to the higher quality of their wood. This higher price would increase the economic profitability of timber harvesting in natural forests, while plantation wood could be used for less noble purposes.

There is an urgent need to promote diversified tropical forestry now, combining timber production from natural forests, mixed plantations, agroforests (human-created forest systems with a multi-level vegetation structure similar to natural forests), and secondary forests (those regenerated on deforested areas left to be abandoned).

The rising international interest in tropical forest restoration under the Bonn Challenge – a plan to restore 350 million hectares of deforested land by 2030 – or the very recent proclamation of the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030), are both opportunities to implement this new approach in the tropics.

But no new system aimed at sustainable timber production will be successful without also introducing effective policies to combat illegal logging and deforestation, which continue to supply the timber market at lower costs and compete with any logging system aimed at long-term sustainability.

By Plinio Sist, member of the FTA Management Team

Originally posted on The Conversation »

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  • Five (or six) solutions for saving the world’s forests and restoring landscapes

Five (or six) solutions for saving the world’s forests and restoring landscapes


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Tony Simons (Left) and Robert Nasi (Right) at the Global Landscapes Forum Bonn 2019 closing plenary. Photo by Pilar Valbuena/GLF
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Working together for maximum impact

From the CIFOR-ICRAF DG column, available here.

We’ve heard a lot about ambitious tree planting initiatives in recent months. Laudable as these may be – and we offer congratulations and celebrate the community-minded impetus behind them – we need a lot more than tree planting to restore degraded landscapes and to save the world’s forests.

On International Day of Forests, we join with the United Nations to draw attention to the urgent need for general recognition of the key role these treed landscapes play in combating climate change and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), targets aimed at alleviating poverty.

We celebrate all forested biomes, whether they are enmeshed in effective agricultural systems, natural peatlands, dry forests and mangroves. “Forgotten” forests that deserve more attention include tropical montane cloud, karst and keranga forests.

We urge the international community to implement robust, systemic changes required to address the dramatic consequences of deforestation and forest degradation, to conserve intact forests, sustainably manage secondary, disturbed or overlogged forests, increase  trees on farms, while restoring degraded lands for both global goods and local livelihoods.

The high-level frameworks and targets exist. Through the SDGs, the New York Declaration on Forests (NYDF), the U.N. Paris Agreement and the Convention on Biological Diversity we have all we need to deploy transformations and succeed. Hopes are now weighted heavily on the U.N. Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030). Will it provide the structure within which governments, businesses and people will act in a united effort to offset global warming before it is too late?

Read also –> Sustainable financing for forest and landscape restoration

But we must not forget those people who are closest to forests. We must deepen our dialogue with the communities who live, work and rely on forests.

Not only are forests the most biologically-diverse land-based ecosystems, but they are home to more than 80 percent of terrestrial species of animals, plants and insects and store vast quantities of carbon.

Consider this: these critical ecosystems containing half the planet’s species of plants and animals provide livelihoods for 1.6 billion people – including more than 2,000 Indigenous cultures – who rely on forests for medicine, fuel, food and shelter.

Although the financial values attributed to land degradation, forest restoration and other data are projections and estimates, we know that the orders of magnitude are valid.

Deforestation, land degradation and depletion of natural capital are common across the world, and estimated to cost $6.3 trillion in lost ecosystem services annually. That is a value roughly 10 percent of the global economy.

Read also –> Assessment Report on Land Degradation and Restoration

When packaged together as the “land-use sector,” agroforestry systems provide more than 95 percent of all human food, generate employment for over half of all adults and account for 30 percent of all greenhouse-gas emissions.

And trees in forests or on farms are at the very heart of nature-based solutions for the climate emergency.

Research by CIFOR-ICRAF and others has shown that not only do trees in forests and fields sequester large amounts of carbon but they also provide food and material for farmers and foresters, renew the fertility of soils and their stability, protect watersheds for downstream consumers, and that they are the critical player in our planet’s water cycle.

And now, as we confront a climate emergency, the global community urgently needs to make better efforts to reconnect human prosperity and ecosystem resilience to forests and agriculture.

So how do we get there?

The world needs transformative scientific, development, business and financial partnerships to undertake the large-scale transformations needed and achieve the global targets so onerously worked out over the years.

Read also –> Atlas of Forest and Landscape Restoration Opportunities

There are five areas where investment can be made to rejuvenate the functions of degraded ecosystems. These will help protect, expand and value forests and their biodiversity, transform agriculture into perennial systems, and build sustainable value chains, with the combined support of governments and the private sector to make the transition to sustainable economies.

First, financing the transition requires a firm commitment from the global community. We have no shortage of money. Estimates indicate that governments spend $1.8 trillion a year in military expenditures and more than $5 trillion in fossil fuel subsidies, but only about $50 billion on landscape restoration.

We need to realign our priorities.

The investment needed to reverse land degradation around the world to meet the target of the NYDF is $830 billion, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. Restoring 350 million hectares as part of the Bonn Challenge — a commitment made during U.N. Climate talks in 2014 as part of the NYDF – is estimated at $360 billion.

Read also –> Restoration: It’s about more than just trees

More must be done to catalyze funds.

As highlighted by participants in November at the Global Landscapes Forum in Luxembourg, triggering investment requires broadening the definition of “wealth” to include natural and social assets, significant collaboration between the public and private sectors and a systematic change in global supply chains and financial systems.

Second, agriculture must be more strongly connected to climate solutions. The agriculture, forestry and other land use sectors are responsible for just under a quarter of human-generated greenhouse gas emissions, mainly caused by deforestation and such agricultural sources as livestock, soil and nutrient management.

Yet, agroforestry, if defined by tree cover of greater than 10 percent on agricultural land, is widespread: found on more than 43 percent of all agricultural land globally, where 30 percent of rural populations live, representing over 1 billion hectares of land and up to 1.5 billion people.

It must be expanded in both area and diversity of species to help countries meet nationally determined contributions – targets under the U.N. Paris Agreement on climate change aimed at reducing global warming – improve livelihoods, enhance food security and perennialize agriculture, taking the pressure off natural forests.

Third, mangroves and peatlands are vital carbon sinks.

Mangrove ecosystems are recognized for their ability to store large amounts of carbon and protect shorelines from erosion caused by ocean activity. They also provide a buffer by capturing sediment high in organic carbon, which can accumulate in tandem with sea level rise, according to research findings by CIFOR scientists.

Read also –> Participatory monitoring to connect local and global priorities for forest restoration

Like mangroves, peatlands have a massive role to play in mitigating the impact of climate change, but they are under major threat in many countries in both the Global North and the South.

For example, in the Congo Basin concessions are up for sale and the threat of drainage is real.  Peatlands make up more than half of all wetlands worldwide and they are equivalent to 3 percent of total land and freshwater surfaces.

Built up over thousands of years from decayed, waterlogged vegetation debris, Wetlands International reports that 15 percent of peatlands have been drained for agriculture, commercial forestry and to extract fuel.

When they are drained, they oxidize and carbon is released into the atmosphere, causing global warming.

A third of the world’s soil carbon and 10 percent of global freshwater resources worldwide are stored in peatlands, according to the International Mire Conservation Group and the International Peat Society.

Any program to fix forests and landscapes must ensure peatlands are protected, rewetted and restored.

Fourth, restoring landscapes can bring impressive benefits, by some measures up to $30 for every dollar invested, but restoration investments have so far been slim.

Important steps toward this transformative investment include collaboration between private and public funders, reducing risk and uncertainty for investors, developing better measures of landscape health and building an inventory of technologies, methods and knowledge that can be expanded in scale.

Fifth, biological diversity is fundamental to the existence of life on Earth. To choose the most obvious example, food crops are plants that rely on pollinators to flower and fruit. The value of these crops is almost $600 billion annually.

The vast majority of pollinators are wild, including 20,000 species of bees, and reliant on intact, diverse and healthy ecosystems. Insects are likely to make up the majority of future biodiversity loss: up to 40 percent of all invertebrate species face extinction.

Integrating a greater amount and number of trees, shrubs and other species into farms will provide habitat, pollinators, natural predators and sources of food and incomes.

And so?

We know the solutions needed to save Earth’s forests implement land restoration and we increasingly understand the implications of failure. Tree planting has inspired many to take action to protect and rehabilitate our forests. What is needed now is the financial commitment to make it happen, and happen fast.

We recall the teachings of Elinor Ostrom (1933-2012), who won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2009, which she shared with Oliver Williamson, “for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons.”

Through her research into how commonly held lands are managed, she overturned traditional colonial-dominant perspectives. She taught us that people can work together to sustainably and effectively shape natural resource use, as long as ground rules and parameters are clear, and those who work on the land are involved. She recognized that rules should not be imposed without consultation from above by governments or other formal entities to achieve the highest level of successful land management.

She delivered the formula for success. We must ensure we live up to it by melding high-level policies with tactics deployed by sustainable land managers — the people who live and work in forests. We must continually work across sectors to achieve comprehensive results.

Listen to Ostrom: “Until a theoretical explanation — based on human choice — for self-organized and self-governed enterprises is fully developed and accepted, major policy decisions will continue to be undertaken with a presumption that individuals cannot organize themselves and always need to be organized by external authorities.”

Further reading

This article was originally posted on the DG column of Forest News.

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  • Toward a tenure-responsive approach to forest landscape restoration: A proposed tenure diagnostic for assessing restoration opportunities

Toward a tenure-responsive approach to forest landscape restoration: A proposed tenure diagnostic for assessing restoration opportunities

13 February, 2019

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The Bonn Challenge, a voluntary global initiative launched in 2011, aims to bring up to 350 million hectares of degraded land into some level of restorative state by 2030. Pilot forest landscape restoration (FLR) efforts indicate that enhancing community and smallholder tenure rights is critical for achieving FLR’s desired joint environmental and social well-being objectives. The Restoration Opportunities Assessment Methodology (ROAM) is a decision support tool that has become widely used in national and subnational FLR planning. Although ROAM is structured so as to encourage inclusion of tenure rights and governance analyses, the extent to which ROAM reports actually incorporate tenure issues is undocumented. To address this gap, we report the results of an analysis of the currently publicly accessible ROAM reports from eight countries in Africa and Latin America. We found that the ROAM reports superficially covered tenure and governance considerations. We recommend design elements for a tenure diagnostic that should facilitate more robust tenure and land governance analyses to complement ROAM and other FLR planning approaches. We suggest the adoption of a rights-enhanced FLR approach so as to capitalize on the motivating force that strong and secure tenure rights provide for landholders to engage in forest restoration design and practice. Although developed in the context of FLR, the proposed tenure diagnostic should have broad utility for other land use initiatives where tenure rights and security are at stake.

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  • How are China, Nepal and Ethiopia restoring forest landscapes?

How are China, Nepal and Ethiopia restoring forest landscapes?


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A researcher explains the use of ground penetrating radar to measure peat depth to professors and students. Photo by D. Ramsay/CIFOR
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Comparative study launched on sidelines of the Global Landscapes Forum finds success in devolving property rights.

Forest landscape restoration has gained a high political profile internationally, but still faces the challenge of how best to involve local communities to ensure the success of programs on the ground. This is an issue that is all the more challenging given the diversity of environmental and sociopolitical contexts around the globe.

Property rights, for instance, are widely accepted as a crucial starting point for restoration — but policymakers struggle to clarify and secure rights over forests. In view of this, researchers at the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), including from the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA), turned to successful FLR programs in China, Nepal and Ethiopia to identify lessons that could be applied elsewhere.

A woman prepares rice for cooking in Nepal. Photo by M. Edliadi/CIFOR

Specifically, they examined how the devolution of access and management rights to local communities provided incentives for them to invest in restoration activities. The study, included in a Special Issue of International Forestry Review on forest landscape restoration, focuses on people managing forests in mountainous and hilly areas.

The special issue was launched on the sidelines of the Global Landscapes Forum in Bonn, Germany, where FTA also participated in discussion forums and panels.

By drawing examples from dramatically different national contexts, the comparative study illustrates “the diversity of paths that the devolution of rights took, but how it had similar results,” says CIFOR senior scientist and lead author Peter Cronkleton.

All three cases of forest tenure reform led to the decentralization of forestry institutions and the partial devolution of management rights to local forest-dependent people, Cronkleton says. This resulted in different comanagement systems that reflect national and local contexts.

However, the general outcome was the same: local households that gained clear and secure benefits from restoration efforts not only invested in management activities, but also helped to protect the resources from overuse and excluded outsiders. Ultimately, this led to an increase in forest cover and improvements in livelihoods.

Read more: FTA at GLF Bonn 2017

COMANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

In Nepal, devolution passed rights to community-level user groups controlling nearby remnant forests, while in China’s Changting county, reforms resulted in a varied array of individuals and local groups controlling different types of forest for different purposes, the study notes.

In Ethiopia, a national forest was subdivided to grant control to local organizations representing subgroups from surrounding communities.

“All or most forests in question started as public or collective property within systems that placed strict restrictions on forest access and use for local stakeholders. However, in each case, national agencies or other authorities lacked the capacity or political will to control and enforce restrictions,” the research points out.

This led to forest degradation and deforestation, as various stakeholders “extracted what they could, and there was little incentive to forgo immediate benefits or invest in the resources’ future.” This scenario, common to the various case studies, started changing following tenure reform.

Now, “Nepal is known as a global leader in community-based forest management,” says CIFOR senior scientist Himlal Baral. More than 20,000 Community Forestry User Groups, making up 40 percent of the population, now manage 33 percent of Nepal’s forests.

“Before, locals had a tendency to overutilize resources,” says Baral. “Today, they have incentives to protect the landscape, and they see restoration as being closely connected to their livelihoods.” From his perspective, this illustrates how the multiple benefits of FLR are key to advancing environmental targets and the Sustainable Development Goals.


In Changting, China, policy reform took a different path. In the study area, collective property rights over forests offered low incentives for restoration. In this case, the key was devolving rights to individual households. Individual forest rights combined with credits and subsidies provided incentives for households, cooperatives and enterprises to invest in FLR.

In Ethiopia, some of the poorest forest-dependent residents organized into user groups under participatory forest management programs (PFM). They were encouraged to develop management plans for lands that were not classified as production or protected forests, and were allowed to extract non-timber products in return.

An estimated 1.5 million hectares of forest are currently under PFM institutions, and an additional two million could be rehabilitated with this mechanism as part of the commitments under the Bonn Challenge.

Read more: Forest Landscape Restoration in Hilly and Mountainous Regions: Special Issue

BETTER FLR PROGRAMS

Indicators of forest devolution success range from an increase in tree cover to reduction in conflicts between local communities and the state, as was the case with the Chilimo PFM program in Ethiopia. Though there were many successes in FLR, the study also points out emerging challenges.

One is whether local communities have ownership over the environmental services produced by their restoration efforts, often by forgoing other benefits, and whether they should be compensated by other stakeholders. “This will be an ongoing question: how to create equitable and efficient systems for having payments for those services,” says Cronkleton.

In comanagement systems, communities are required to demonstrate their compliance with forestry regulations. According to Cronkleton, “the tendency to impose more and more elaborate management and reporting requirements can create a disincentive.”

From his perspective, devolving property rights to local actors is as important as including them in determining how the restoration should take place. “Comanagement should involve an ongoing negotiation and adaptation to new learnings. It is a process rather than a one-off decision.”

Further research could explore how different ways of devolving rights affect restoration efforts. For now, scientists hope this study will raise awareness among policymakers and practitioners of the need to involve locals when designing rights systems and compliance mechanisms. After all, says Cronkleton, “it is key to the success of the initiative.”

Read more: Forest and landscape restoration severely constrained by a lack of attention to the quantity and quality of tree seed: Insights from a global survey

By Gloria Pallares, originally published at CIFOR’s Forests News. 

For more information on this topic, please contact Peter Cronkleton at p.cronkleton@cgiar.org or Himlal Baral at h.baral@cgiar.org.

This research forms part of the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry, which is supported by CGIAR Fund Donors.

This research was supported by UK aid from the UK government.

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Restoring forest landscapes: A question of community rights


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Trees dot the scenery in the Kongoussi area, Burkina Faso. Photo by O. Girard/CIFOR
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Trees dot the scenery in the Kongoussi area, Burkina Faso. Photo by O. Girard/CIFOR

What does forest landscape restoration mean for tenure, governance and communities?

About 30 percent of the earth’s surface is covered by forests, and around 1.6 billion people depend on them for significant contributions to their environments and livelihoods. Yet, 12 million hectares of intact forests are lost in the tropics every year, either through permanent destruction or degradation.

Forest Landscape Restoration (FLR) is one of the newer initiatives to be put forward to help solve the problem. While its better-known cousin REDD+ aims to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation, the goal of FLR is to restore ecological integrity to deforested and degraded landscapes. Both see the link between healthy forests and human wellbeing.

Interest in FLR increased in 2011, with the launch of the Bonn Challenge, which aims to restore 150 million ha of degraded land by 2020, a figure that the 2014 New York Declaration on Forests increased to 350 million ha by 2030.

Scientists from the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), including those working as part of the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA) and CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets, are looking into how FLR is working so far, and aiming to identify key challenges. Some of these are laid out in a new paper highlighting tenure, governance and equity considerations for getting FLR to work on the ground.

“The international community has committed tremendous resources to reforesting areas of extensive forest loss in the tropics. Very ambitious goals have been set, but implementation in many countries has been slow,” notes Steven Lawry, Director of CIFOR’s Equity, Gender and Tenure research program, and a coauthor of the paper.

Lawry believes this is in part due to the fact that insufficient attention has been given to questions of the strength of land and forest rights held by people living in areas intended to benefit from restoration initiatives.

“In fact, community rights are often very weak. Communities are not able to make decisions about the planning or implementation of FLR projects,” says Lawry.

IS THIS LAND MY LAND? 

The researchers found that tenure systems play a major role in shaping who benefits from forests and who benefits from restoration initiatives.

“Tenure security is vital,” says Lawry. “Communities or individuals with land and forest rights can make decisions about taking up FLR investments on terms acceptable to themselves.”

“With forest rights, they can negotiate questions about choice of tree species, forest land use in relation to other land uses, and operating principles about forest management and governance,” he adds.

The scientists found that one major obstacle to achieving this goal is that people may have rights to the land, but not to all trees on that land.

Read more: For secure land rights, indigenous forest communities need more than just titles

The native lands of the Tres Islas community are seen in Peru. Photo by CIFOR/Juan Carlos Huay llapuma

“FLR is about trying to restore ecological functionality and, generally speaking, native species tend to be better for that,” notes Rebecca McLain, CIFOR consultant and author of the paper.

“But if people don’t have rights to sustainably grow native species, the ones that are protected, then they aren’t going to grow those species in the areas they have ownership over because they aren’t their trees. So that’s a really big disincentive,” she says.

She points to Ghana, which has had some success in overcoming this challenge through a government-run revenue-sharing initiative known as Community Resource Management Area (CREMA). Under CREMA, communities are given the authority to manage resources for economic benefit, while being supported in efforts to conserve native biodiversity.

CREMA directly deals with trade-offs between conservation and development aims, and uses local knowledge to protect land and forests sustainably.

FILLING IN POLICY GAPS

Much of the forest domain in developing countries is owned by the state and managed by national and local forest agencies. Forest governance is largely based on a combination of formal and informal regulation of forest use by governments, companies, communities and other forest users.

“Rules and regulations often support important values and public policy goals, including conservation and biodiversity protection,” says Lawry.

“But when policies fail to take account of the economic and land-use goals of local users, regulations can have punitive effects, by denying or limiting opportunities for communities to derive livelihood benefits from forests, even for sustainable forest uses,” he adds.

McLain says another key issue that often came up was a “mismatch” between forest policies and agricultural policies.

“So you have a forest policy trying to support FLR and an agriculture policy which is encouraging people to clear land and plant crops. And those two end up being in conflict with each other,” says McLain.

Most people living in these forest communities are poor, so they will plant and harvest whatever provides them with the greatest income for their families. McLain says there are ways for people to make a living from the forest, but if they can make more from agriculture then they will likely clear the land for crops.

“At that point, you need to see a payments-for-ecosystem-services policy come in, where you literally pay people not to clear the forest for crops like oil palm or cassava,” she says.

DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS

The researchers found that NGOs often play a major role in supporting communities that want to manage their forests.

“In Madagascar, the government claims ownership of forests, but they had a law that made it possible to create a community-managed forest,” McLain says. “An international NGO helped the community broker the contract with the forest service, and essentially they were then able to claim rights on a piece of land.”

Another solution the researchers say can work is giving long-term concessions to local communities rather than to big logging companies. Some countries are trying to do this by transferring rights to local communities, but often there is a qualifier.

“The deal is, if you want to harvest timber you need a management plan. Well, that’s not as easy as it sounds and it takes technical skills and time, so in essence, they were tying peoples’ hands,” says McLain.

Read more: Finding a way in for better landscape governance

A water porter makes his way to a gold panning area in Sindri village, Burkina Faso. Photo by O. Girard/CIFOR

Lawry agrees, adding that sophisticated management plans are needed in many contexts where communities have been given a measure of rights, not just concessions.

“The Kenyan provision for establishment of Community Forest Associations is a case in point. Communities can only use the forest once a management plan has been approved,” he says.

“On the other hand, the management plan requirement has worked well in Guatemala, in the Mayan Biosphere Reserve, where plans are FSC certified. There, communities had three years to get their plans certified, and a lot of support from NGOs on the technical side,” he adds.

McLain says it is not just communities that tend to lack the capacity to develop a management plan, but governments often do not have the resources, either.

“It’s important for FLR to figure out that piece to make it work. It’s not actually tenure, but it may be part of what you need to make that tenure piece work,” she adds.

PUTTING PEOPLE FIRST

The researchers say FLR initiatives will have a greater chance of success over the long-run if they invest in helping communities secure stronger, clearer rights to forests where rights are weak.

“In some settings, rights are strong on paper, but forest agencies have not changed their regulatory practices in ways that recognize the new-found authority of communities to exercise greater control over the use and management of forests,” says Lawry.

“FLR programs can help negotiate full actualization of rights, as a condition of long-term support and investment,” he says.

McLain adds that to make FLR work, you need strong community and stakeholder engagement.

“I think if you could have real, meaningful community engagement — where the government, private sector and NGOs get together with forest users and really listen to them — then I think it can work,” says McLain.

“How you get there is the challenge,” she adds.

By Suzanna Dayne, originally published at CIFOR’s Forests News. 

For more information on this topic, please contact Steven Lawry at s.lawry@cgiar.org.

This research forms part of the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry, which is supported by CGIAR Fund Donors.

This research was supported by Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and the CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets.

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Restoring forest landscapes: A question of community rights

09 November, 2017

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Trees dot the scenery in the Kongoussi area, Burkina Faso. Photo by O. Girard/CIFOR
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Trees dot the scenery in the Kongoussi area, Burkina Faso. Photo by O. Girard/CIFOR

What does forest landscape restoration mean for tenure, governance and communities?

About 30 percent of the earth’s surface is covered by forests, and around 1.6 billion people depend on them for significant contributions to their environments and livelihoods. Yet, 12 million hectares of intact forests are lost in the tropics every year, either through permanent destruction or degradation.

Forest Landscape Restoration (FLR) is one of the newer initiatives to be put forward to help solve the problem. While its better-known cousin REDD+ aims to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation, the goal of FLR is to restore ecological integrity to deforested and degraded landscapes. Both see the link between healthy forests and human wellbeing.

Interest in FLR increased in 2011, with the launch of the Bonn Challenge, which aims to restore 150 million ha of degraded land by 2020, a figure that the 2014 New York Declaration on Forests increased to 350 million ha by 2030.

Scientists from the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), including those working as part of the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA) and CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets, are looking into how FLR is working so far, and aiming to identify key challenges. Some of these are laid out in a new paper highlighting tenure, governance and equity considerations for getting FLR to work on the ground.

“The international community has committed tremendous resources to reforesting areas of extensive forest loss in the tropics. Very ambitious goals have been set, but implementation in many countries has been slow,” notes Steven Lawry, Director of CIFOR’s Equity, Gender and Tenure research program, and a coauthor of the paper.

Lawry believes this is in part due to the fact that insufficient attention has been given to questions of the strength of land and forest rights held by people living in areas intended to benefit from restoration initiatives.

“In fact, community rights are often very weak. Communities are not able to make decisions about the planning or implementation of FLR projects,” says Lawry.

IS THIS LAND MY LAND? 

The researchers found that tenure systems play a major role in shaping who benefits from forests and who benefits from restoration initiatives.

“Tenure security is vital,” says Lawry. “Communities or individuals with land and forest rights can make decisions about taking up FLR investments on terms acceptable to themselves.”

“With forest rights, they can negotiate questions about choice of tree species, forest land use in relation to other land uses, and operating principles about forest management and governance,” he adds.

The scientists found that one major obstacle to achieving this goal is that people may have rights to the land, but not to all trees on that land.

Read more: For secure land rights, indigenous forest communities need more than just titles

The native lands of the Tres Islas community are seen in Peru. Photo by CIFOR/Juan Carlos Huay llapuma

“FLR is about trying to restore ecological functionality and, generally speaking, native species tend to be better for that,” notes Rebecca McLain, CIFOR consultant and author of the paper.

“But if people don’t have rights to sustainably grow native species, the ones that are protected, then they aren’t going to grow those species in the areas they have ownership over because they aren’t their trees. So that’s a really big disincentive,” she says.

She points to Ghana, which has had some success in overcoming this challenge through a government-run revenue-sharing initiative known as Community Resource Management Area (CREMA). Under CREMA, communities are given the authority to manage resources for economic benefit, while being supported in efforts to conserve native biodiversity.

CREMA directly deals with trade-offs between conservation and development aims, and uses local knowledge to protect land and forests sustainably.

FILLING IN POLICY GAPS

Much of the forest domain in developing countries is owned by the state and managed by national and local forest agencies. Forest governance is largely based on a combination of formal and informal regulation of forest use by governments, companies, communities and other forest users.

“Rules and regulations often support important values and public policy goals, including conservation and biodiversity protection,” says Lawry.

“But when policies fail to take account of the economic and land-use goals of local users, regulations can have punitive effects, by denying or limiting opportunities for communities to derive livelihood benefits from forests, even for sustainable forest uses,” he adds.

McLain says another key issue that often came up was a “mismatch” between forest policies and agricultural policies.

“So you have a forest policy trying to support FLR and an agriculture policy which is encouraging people to clear land and plant crops. And those two end up being in conflict with each other,” says McLain.

Most people living in these forest communities are poor, so they will plant and harvest whatever provides them with the greatest income for their families. McLain says there are ways for people to make a living from the forest, but if they can make more from agriculture then they will likely clear the land for crops.

“At that point, you need to see a payments-for-ecosystem-services policy come in, where you literally pay people not to clear the forest for crops like oil palm or cassava,” she says.

DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS

The researchers found that NGOs often play a major role in supporting communities that want to manage their forests.

“In Madagascar, the government claims ownership of forests, but they had a law that made it possible to create a community-managed forest,” McLain says. “An international NGO helped the community broker the contract with the forest service, and essentially they were then able to claim rights on a piece of land.”

Another solution the researchers say can work is giving long-term concessions to local communities rather than to big logging companies. Some countries are trying to do this by transferring rights to local communities, but often there is a qualifier.

“The deal is, if you want to harvest timber you need a management plan. Well, that’s not as easy as it sounds and it takes technical skills and time, so in essence, they were tying peoples’ hands,” says McLain.

Read more: Finding a way in for better landscape governance

A water porter makes his way to a gold panning area in Sindri village, Burkina Faso. Photo by O. Girard/CIFOR

Lawry agrees, adding that sophisticated management plans are needed in many contexts where communities have been given a measure of rights, not just concessions.

“The Kenyan provision for establishment of Community Forest Associations is a case in point. Communities can only use the forest once a management plan has been approved,” he says.

“On the other hand, the management plan requirement has worked well in Guatemala, in the Mayan Biosphere Reserve, where plans are FSC certified. There, communities had three years to get their plans certified, and a lot of support from NGOs on the technical side,” he adds.

McLain says it is not just communities that tend to lack the capacity to develop a management plan, but governments often do not have the resources, either.

“It’s important for FLR to figure out that piece to make it work. It’s not actually tenure, but it may be part of what you need to make that tenure piece work,” she adds.

PUTTING PEOPLE FIRST

The researchers say FLR initiatives will have a greater chance of success over the long-run if they invest in helping communities secure stronger, clearer rights to forests where rights are weak.

“In some settings, rights are strong on paper, but forest agencies have not changed their regulatory practices in ways that recognize the new-found authority of communities to exercise greater control over the use and management of forests,” says Lawry.

“FLR programs can help negotiate full actualization of rights, as a condition of long-term support and investment,” he says.

McLain adds that to make FLR work, you need strong community and stakeholder engagement.

“I think if you could have real, meaningful community engagement — where the government, private sector and NGOs get together with forest users and really listen to them — then I think it can work,” says McLain.

“How you get there is the challenge,” she adds.

By Suzanna Dayne, originally published at CIFOR’s Forests News. 

For more information on this topic, please contact Steven Lawry at s.lawry@cgiar.org.

This research forms part of the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry, which is supported by CGIAR Fund Donors.

This research was supported by Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and the CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets.

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The power of science communication: How can the media help protect peatlands?


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For some residents of South Sumatra, Indonesia, peat is a constant preoccupation. 

“Life keeps getting harder,” says 53-year-old Maemunah. She lives in Talangnangka village in the center of the province, among peatland that was once covered in forest.

Large swathes have now been drained and set alight in order to clear space for agricultural use, setting off a dangerous ripple effect. The local rubber plantation was recently caught up in one of the fires and was completely destroyed. Water levels in the rivers have also dropped as the peat around them dries.

“Now it’s difficult to find fish,” says Maemunah. “Before, I could sell them and get Rp 100,000 [US$7.50] a day. Now, earning Rp 10,000 [75 cents] is a struggle. Peat should be looked after, but it’s not.”

Read also: Eyes on the livelihoods of peatland communities

In Prigi village, Yandri farms rice and is used to slashing and burning his fields every year to get rid of pests and allow the ash to fertilize the soil. He knows the practice is now illegal, as authorities try to protect peatlands, but he has no idea what alternative to turn to.

“Those of us from the community don’t understand how to manage peatland correctly,” he says.

SOUTH SUMATRA BURNING

The confusion among locals about how to effectively handle the peatlands they depend on significantly contributes to South Sumatra’s problems. The province is home to some of the largest areas of peat in Indonesia.

It has also experienced some of the country’s largest forest fires as these zones are converted into agricultural plantations to make products like palm oil. In the process, huge amounts of carbon have been released from the peat into the atmosphere. Rare plants and animals have been also been destroyed and the toxic air has caused long-term public health concerns.

Researchers are desperate to stem the tide and local people’s uncertainty by reaching them with important messages that can protect peatlands and their livelihoods. They also want to effectively communicate the personal struggles of people living on peatlands to policymakers.

Journalists take part in training with Budhy Kristanty, Communications Coordinator for CIFOR’s Indonesia program. Photo by Icaro Cooke Vieira/CIFOR

JOINING FORCES WITH JOURNALISTS

Many believe the media could hold the key. Television is the dominant source of news and entertainment in Indonesia. Radio and newspapers are also common, with radio in particular as an important way to reach people in remote rural areas. Online readership is growing, with recent studies suggesting a rapidly growing rate of Internet access and social media use across the country.

“To make scientific language popular, we need the media,” says Budhy Kristanty, Communications Coordinator for Indonesia at the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), which leads the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA) with its partners. Kristanty recently organized a media training workshop, The role of integrated landscapes on issues of fires, peatland and bioenergy, for 40 Indonesian journalists in Palembang, South Sumatra.

“The media can become an agent of change that can encourage behavioral changes,” she says.

“We write and it’s understood by the common people, and understood by professors,” says Muhammad Arif Eko Wibowo, a journalist from MNC Media South Sumatra, who attended the workshop.

WHEN SCIENCE MEETS MEDIA

With a team of four CIFOR scientists, Kristanty ran two days of training for 40 journalists – some with extensive knowledge of peatlands, some with little or none. As well as a field visit to an affected community, it included presentations by the scientists on peat and deforestation and introductions to their research projects on bioenergy and conservation in Indonesia.

“It’s really important to have science communicated to wider communities including the media,” says Himlal Baral, a senior scientist at CIFOR, who presented his research on using bioenergy crops to restore degraded lands in Kalimantan, Indonesia, during the training.

Himlal Baral, Senior Scientist at CIFOR, gives a presentation to journalists at the media training. Photo by Icaro Cooke Vieira/CIFOR

“As a scientist, we investigate answers to complex issues and we present them in scientific papers or journals, which are not much of interest to wider communities, especially local communities or policymakers,” he says. “Media can help turn them into a simpler form.”

Research has already shown some positive engagement by Indonesian media on related issues, such as the REDD+ project that aims to reduce emissions from deforestation and foster conservation.

However, overall, the media still has a ways to go.

“It turns out basic knowledge on peatlands, forests and the environment is generally lacking,” says Kristanty. “Some local journalists here don’t even know what peatlands are, or why peatland conservation is important.”

What’s more, getting media interested in covering stories with scientific angles can be difficult.

“In Indonesia, in my opinion, the general media is rarely interested in covering environmental news unless there’s a major event, which makes it important to cover, like forest fires, or floods and landslides,” says Kristanty.

After meeting and interviewing scientists directly during the sessions, journalists revealed their own analysis on the lack of scientific coverage in their media: A shortage of sources.

“We tend to have trouble finding researchers in the region who are concerned about discussing environmental issues,” says Tasma Sindo, a journalist with Koran Sindo newspaper in Palembang. “For instance, it’s hard for us to compare academics or the opinions of NGOs in the region; there tends to be a bias with news only coming from the government or other official stakeholders.”

THE BONN CHALLENGE

The media training was timed to run in conjunction with the Bonn Challenge High-Level Roundtable Meeting in Palembang, South Sumatra a few days later (May 9-10).

Started in 2011, The Bonn Challenge is a global effort to restore 150 million hectares of the world’s deforested and degraded land by 2020 and 350 million hectares by 2030. It’s designed to help countries realize existing international commitments, including REDD+. To date, 44 governments, alliances and private sector organizations have committed to restoring over 150 million hectares of land to help meet the challenge.

Although not yet officially part of the Bonn Challenge, Indonesia has vowed to restore more than 29,000,000 hectares of land. In order to help meet this, the government has already set up the national Peatland Restoration Agency, outlawed slash and burn techniques and banned the conversion of peatlands to agricultural plantations.

Read also: Peatlands: The view from space

Scientists hope that if the media can help publicize their research on mitigating climate change and balancing livelihoods on degraded peatlands by turning to sustainable solutions like bioenergy and landscape restoration, local communities will be able to do more to contribute to these objectives.

“The Bonn Challenge is key for restoration because they have a target,” says Herry Purnomo, a CIFOR scientist who took part in the training. “It’s important for media to support that kind of vision, that kind of action.”

Back on the peatlands, Maemunah and Yandri are anxious for just this kind of practical information that could help them safely continue making their living. Researchers hope that not only will media outlets reach them with relevant news directly, but journalists will also help transmit their experiences to the provincial and national capitals, to help bring about broader change.

By Leona Liu and Rose Foley, originally published at CIFOR’s Forests News. 

For more information on this topic, please contact Budhy Kristanty at b.kristanty@cgiar.org.

This research forms part of the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry. This work is supported by CGIAR Fund Donors.

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Green growth in Indonesia meets the Bonn Challenge


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Peat fires can smolder for many months, emitting large amounts of smoke and greenhouse gases. Photo by Robert Finlayson/ICRAF
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Peat fires can smolder for many months, emitting large amounts of smoke and greenhouse gases. Photo by Robert Finlayson/ICRAF

At the First Asia Bonn Challenge High-level Meeting in Palembang, South Sumatra province, Indonesia’s first Masterplan for Renewable Resources-Driven Green Growth was launched thanks to the technical support of the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), a CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA) partner.

Hosted by South Sumatra Governor H. Alex Noerdin, representatives of 28 nations and international research and development organizations met to discuss commitments to reforestation and progress towards them. The Bonn Challenge is a global effort to bring 150 million ha of the world’s deforested and degraded land into restoration by 2020, and 350 million hectares by 2030.

Under the leadership of the Environment and Forestry Ministry at the national level and of Noerdin in the province, South Sumatra is becoming a world leader in that commitment to restoration and the creation of a ‘green’ economy based on sustainable use of natural resources.

South Sumatra is of particular importance since more than 700,000 hectares of forest and peatland in the province were destroyed by fire in 2015, blanketing the province and neighboring parts of Sumatra, Singapore and Malaysia in a toxic, choking haze for months on end. In responding to such a catastrophe, a huge effort has been made by the provincial and national governments with strong support from nations such as Norway and Germany to ensure that it never happens again.

However, in a complex landscape such as South Sumatra, simply buying more fire trucks won’t do the job. An integrated, cross-sectoral approach is needed to address all the issues that contribute to land degradation and fires.

An oil-palm and forest landscape is seen from above in South Sumatra. Photo by ICRAF

The greater part of South Sumatra consists of low-lying plains covered with plantations, marshes, mangroves and remnants of natural forests, most of which were converted to monocultural rubber, oil-palm and pulp-wood plantations. The area under oil palm has increased rapidly from 0.87 million ha in 2011 to 1.11 million in 2014. Nearly half of the plantations are on farmers’ smallholdings of around 1–2 hectares. Clearing of the remaining forests, whether ‘protected’ or some other status, continues as people look for opportunities to establish or expand their livelihoods.

The results of the conversions by large companies and smallholders alike has increased economic growth but has also had negative effects, such as deforestation and then draining of peatland (16% of the province) resulting in high carbon emissions from the drying peat and its subsequent burning, illegal logging and a general deterioration of all ecosystems, highlighted by the declaration of the Musi River Watershed as one of the most critical in Indonesia. These effects, in turn, are having an impact on the very economic growth that drove them.

According to the World Bank, estimates of the total economic cost of the fires in 2015 in South Sumatra and several other provinces exceeded USD 16 billion, equal to nearly 2% of the nation’s gross domestic product. This estimate includes losses to agriculture, forestry, transport, trade, industry and tourism. Some of these costs are direct losses of crops, forests, houses and infrastructure, as well as the costs of responding to the fires and disruption of air, land and sea travel owing to the haze, or toxic smoke (featuring carbon monoxide, cyanide and ammonium), which also caused widespread respiratory, eye and skin ailments and deaths, especially among the very young and elderly.

Daily greenhouse-gas emissions from the fires exceeded those from the entire US economy. If Indonesia could stop the fires, it would meet its stated target of reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions by 29% by the year 2030.

At the heart of the province’s response to these seemingly insurmountable challenges is the Masterplan for Renewable Resources-Driven Green Growth, developed by ICRAF in collaboration with IDH, the sustainable trade initiative, which was launched by Noerdin at the meeting, timed to coincide with a major conference of the challenge in Bonn, Germany. The publication will be available to the public shortly.

Noerdin’s initiative has inspired other Sumatran provinces. Representatives of the 10 provinces of Sumatra signed a joint declaration of commitment to green growth commitment following the launch of the masterplan.

The vision of the South Sumatra administration for a fire-free and sustainable province features five areas of achievement adopted from Indonesia’s national development goals: sustainable economic growth; inclusive and equitable growth; social, economic, and environmental resilience; healthy and productive ecosystems as environmental services’ providers; and reduction of greenhouse-gas emissions.

Inspired by the vision, ICRAF’s Sonya Dewi and team used three principles to guide their approach to development of the masterplan. The first was ‘inclusivity’, in which government agencies, communities and businesses were actively involved in the creation of various growth scenarios, ensuring that aspirations and barriers were identified early on.

The second principle demanded ‘integration’ of the plethora of national and provincial government programs, particularly the province’s spatial and development plans, to ensure no overlap or conflict. The third, ‘informed’, stressed the necessity of valid evidence and scientific modeling that could project the socioeconomic and environmental impact of any particular development scenario, to be used to analyze trade-offs between economic growth and environmental health and in making decisions about which was the optimal scenario.

Sonya Dewi (left) and H. Alex Noerdin at the First Asia Bonn Challenge High-level Meeting. Photo by Arizka Mufida/ICRAF

The Land-use Planning for Multiple Environmental Services (LUMENS) methodology and software created by ICRAF, which forms part of FTA research, was used to develop green-growth scenarios and compare them with ‘business as usual’. LUMENS had previously been mandated by the Ministry for National Development Planning for use in all 34 provinces.

“To transform a process that has existed for years and years within an established bureaucracy is not easy,” acknowledged Dewi.

“Improvements in policies and technical abilities along with a change in mindset are needed for successful green development. In the past, actions did not run well and were uncoordinated. Hence the need for a jointly agreed plan that involves everyone, including local officials, the private sector and the commitment of the leader, which we have in Governor Noerdin.”

In essence, the masterplan combines the government’s spatial and land-use plans and its development plans to focus on low environmental impact, drive economic growth and ensure high engagement among the people of South Sumatra and beyond.

Dewi and team designed the masterplan to be implemented in several steps. First, government land-use plans need to be adjusted to include the actual existing conservation and commodity-crop areas, which at present are not well delineated. Further, degraded land is identified for restoration, including agroforestry, and social justice and agrarian reform carried out to distribute land to the poor as part of the national government’s programs.

Second, people’s capacity in all sectors of government, community and business needs to be built, based on the ‘five capitals’ of finance, human resources, physical, natural resources and social. Third, productivity of specific commodity crops needs to be improved through application of good agricultural practices, agroforestry and better management.

Fourth, value chains for commodities need to be improved hand in hand with building the capacity of farmers’ management and entrepreneurship skills to achieve the best possible post-harvest results. Fifth, remote agricultural production areas need to be better connected with transit centres and distribution lines by developing infrastructure.

Sixth, restoration of degraded land needs to be carried out. Land currently under agriculture will not be able to meet the needs of the people. Hence, degraded land needs to be brought into production through forest-landscape restoration, agroforestry and other restoration methods.

Finally, mechanisms need to be established to reward people for maintaining and improving the services provided by ecosystems, such as clean and plentiful water, and for innovating to ensure continuous supply of quality commodities or eco-certification for higher sale prices. The masterplan, if implemented successfully, will allow South Sumatra to grow economically in an equitable manner and raise the resilience of farmers, maintain watershed functions and biodiversity, reduce fire risks, curb natural forest loss, and reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

After the launch of the masterplan, discussions were held on the sidelines with a number of representatives of nations who were keen to continue their support of South Sumatra’s efforts as it begins implementation.

By Rob Finlayson and Angga Ariestya, originally published at ICRAF’s Agroforestry World. Edited by Hannah Maddison-Harris, FTA.

This work forms part of the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA). 

We thank all donors who support research in development through their contributions to the CGIAR Fund.

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