Tag: deforestation

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  • Community concessions bring newfound hope for forest conservation and socioeconomic development

Community concessions bring newfound hope for forest conservation and socioeconomic development

10 November, 2017
Men in a community forest enterprise in Petén, Guatemala, involved in milling precious woods. Photo by D.Stoian/Bioversity International
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FTA COMMUNICATIONS TEAM
Men in a community forest enterprise in Petén, Guatemala, involved in milling precious woods. Photo by D. Stoian/Bioversity International

Recent findings evidenced that when forests are in the hands of local communities, governance, conservation and livelihoods improve.

Reform advocates claim that local communities are better stewards of forests than the state, particularly in settings where understaffing and other limitations do not allow government agencies to live up to their mandate.

There is increasing evidence that the devolution of rights to forest communities leads to a decrease in deforestation rates, better protection of biodiversity, and significant livelihood benefits of community members, especially if linked to the development of community forest enterprises.

Bioversity International and partners are contributing to this evidence base through large-scale socioeconomic surveys in the Petén region of Guatemala where 25-year forest concessions have been granted to the communities in the late 1990s.

CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA) scientist Dietmar Stoian of Bioversity International, who has led this research since 2014 says: “For the first time there is a complete socioeconomic data set across the nine active concessions, which show that, if carefully managed, the community concessions allow local people to move out of poverty while conserving the forest and its inherent biodiversity.”

“While we observe significant variation across and within the concessions, community stewardship of the forest resources has proven to be a viable model for forest conservation and livelihoods development,” he adds.

Members of a community forest enterprise grade leaves of the Chamaedorea palm for export. Photo by D. Stoian/Bioversity International

As the community concessions need to undergo renewal over the next few years, Bioversity International, Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and the Asociación de Comunidades Forestales de Petén (ACOFOP) — the umbrella organization of forest communities in the Petén — organized a workshop in September.

Over 40 researchers, practitioners, and policy makers, attended the workshop to take stock of existing evidence of the concessions’ environmental and socioeconomic performance and to discuss options going forward.

CIFOR scientist Steven Lawry explained in an interview with Forests News that the approach has produced positive results: “Deforestation rates within the concessions are markedly lower than in surrounding areas. Employment has increased, and community members receive dividends from timber sales.”

What is more, the resident forest communities are now able to make an income also from regulated hunting, collecting non-timber forest products, farming, and working off-farm. The diversification of their income sources contributes to their improved livelihoods by providing greater stability and food security.

“The community forest concession model has informed other ongoing processes for rights devolution in forest regions,” said Iliana Monterroso, co-organizer of the workshop on behalf of CIFOR. In fact, Indonesia, China and Colombia are looking at how the forest concession model might benefit their countries.

Originally published on the website of Bioversity International.

This research has been supported by the Austrian Development Agency (ADA) with funding by the Austrian Development Cooperation (ADC). It is part of the CGIAR Research Programs on Policies, Institutions and Markets (PIM) and Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA) and is supported by CGIAR Fund Donors. We thank ADA and ADC for their funding and all donors who support PIM and FTA through their contributions to the CGIAR Fund.

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

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

31 July, 2017
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FTA COMMUNICATIONS TEAM

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

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  • Motivation Matters: Lessons for REDD+ Participatory Measurement, Reporting and Verification from Three Decades of Child Health Participatory Monitoring in Indonesia

Motivation Matters: Lessons for REDD+ Participatory Measurement, Reporting and Verification from Three Decades of Child Health Participatory Monitoring in Indonesia

03 July, 2017
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FTA COMMUNICATIONS TEAM

Abstract

Participatory Measurement, Reporting and Verification (PMRV), in the context of reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation with its co-benefits (REDD+) requires sustained monitoring and reporting by community members. This requirement appears challenging and has yet to be achieved. Other successful, long established, community self-monitoring and reporting systems may provide valuable lessons.

The Indonesian integrated village healthcare program (Posyandu) was initiated in the 1980s and still provides effective and successful participatory measurement and reporting of child health status across the diverse, and often remote, communities of Indonesia. Posyandu activities focus on the growth and development of children under the age of five by recording their height and weight and reporting these monthly to the Ministry of Health. Here we focus on the local Posyandu personnel (kaders) and their motivations and incentives for contributing.

While Posyandu and REDD+ measurement and reporting activities differ, there are sufficient commonalities to draw useful lessons. We find that the Posyandu kaders are motivated by their interests in health care, by their belief that it benefits the community, and by encouragement by local leaders. Recognition from the community, status within the system, training opportunities, competition among communities, and small payments provide incentives to sustain participation. We examine these lessons in the context of REDD+.

Download the publication.

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  • Managing degraded forests, a new priority in the Brazilian Amazon

Managing degraded forests, a new priority in the Brazilian Amazon

21 June, 2017
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FTA COMMUNICATIONS TEAM

Overview 

By taking drastic steps, Brazil has succeeded in reducing the annual deforestation rate for Amazonia from 27 770 km2 in 2005 to 5 830 km2 in 2015. However, those steps have not had any effect on forest degradation, notably the partial destruction of the canopy.

In the Brazilian Amazon, degraded forests dominate the landscape along pioneer fronts. The region now faces a major challenge: stopping degradation and managing its forests sustainably. In this issue of Perspective, researchers highlight four priorities for research: developing degraded forest characterization and monitoring methods, drafting specific management plans, understanding the role played by all social players, and supporting policies on a territorial level.

Nowadays, degraded forests are a forest category in their own right. They could play a major role in mitigating climate change. They could also contribute to better ecological functioning on a territorial level. Drafting policies with the dual aim of reducing degradation and optimizing these forests requires strong support from research.

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  • Wild meat threatened by deforestation and mining

Wild meat threatened by deforestation and mining

03 February, 2017
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FTA

Established by CIFOR in 2011, the Bushmeat Research Initiative (BRI) brings together diverse researchers and practitioners to generate and share knowledge on bushmeat harvesting, marketing and consumption across Latin America, Africa and Asia. The initiative was established under the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry.

This video from Colombia shows some of the challenges of the rural population to access bushmeat.

It is in Spanish with English subtitles.

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  • Beyond opportunity costs: who bears the implementation costs of reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation?

Beyond opportunity costs: who bears the implementation costs of reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation?

31 January, 2017
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FTA

Authors: Luttrell, C.; Sills, E.O.; Aryani, R.; Ekaputri, A.D.; Evnike, M.F.

Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) in developing countries is based on the premise that conserving tropical forests is a cost-effective way to reduce carbon emissions and therefore can be fully funded by international actors with obligations or interests in reducing emissions. However, concerns have repeatedly been raised about whether stakeholders in REDD+ host countries will actually end up bearing the costs of REDD+. Most prior analyses of the costs of REDD+ have focused on the opportunity costs of foregone alternative uses of forest land. We draw on a pan-tropical study of 22 subnational REDD+ initiatives in five countries to explore patterns in implementation costs, including which types of organizations are involved and which are sharing the costs of implementing REDD+. We find that many organizations involved in the implementation of REDD+, particularly at the subnational level and in the public sector, are bearing implementation costs not covered by the budgets of the REDD+ initiatives. To sustain this level of cost-sharing, REDD+ must be designed to deliver local as well as global forest benefits.

Publication Year: 2017

ISSN: 1381-2386

Source: Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change

DOI: 10.1007/s11027-016-9736-6

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  • Success from the ground up: Participatory monitoring and forest restoration

Success from the ground up: Participatory monitoring and forest restoration

18 January, 2017
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FTA

Authors: Evans, K.; Guariguata, M.R.

New global forest restoration initiatives present an unparalleled opportunity to reverse the trend of deforestation and forest degradation in the coming years. This effort will require the collaboration of stakeholders at all levels, and most importantly, the participation and support of local people. These ambitious restoration initiatives will also require monitoring systems that allow for scalability and adaptability to a range of local sites. This will be essential in understanding how a given restoration effort is progressing, determining why or why not it is succeeding and learning from both its successes and failures. Participatory monitoring could play a crucial role in meeting international monitoring needs. The potential of participatory monitoring in forest restoration and related forest management activities is explored in this review through multiple case studies, experiences, field tests and conceptual discussions. The review seeks to deepen and broaden our understanding of participatory monitoring by teasing out the lessons learned from existing knowledge and mapping a possible path forward, with the aim of improving the outcomes of forest restoration initiatives.

Source: CIFOR Publications

Series: CIFOR Occasional Paper no. 159

Pages: 43p.

Publisher: Bogor, Indonesia, Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR)

Publication Year: 2016

ISBN: 978-602-387-039-4

DOI: 10.17528/cifor/006284

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  • Drivers of Illegal and Destructive Forest Use

Drivers of Illegal and Destructive Forest Use

27 December, 2016
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FTA communications

Authors: Pokorny, B.; Pacheco, P.; Cerutti, P.O.; van Solinge, T.B.; Kissinger, G.; Tacconi, L.

This chapter reflects upon the drivers of illegal logging and associated timber trade. Much of this discussion is related to a broader debate about the drivers of forest degradation and deforestation (FAO, 2016a; Kissinger et al., 2012; Geist and Lambin, 2001). In this debate illegal logging is primarily interpreted as harvesting of timber for export by logging companies that take advantage of flaws in regulations and law enforcement (Kissinger et al., 2012). This framing has been partly driven by the lobbies of timber importing countries to bring the issue of deforestation within the legality debate, and so to extol those policy measures aimed at improving forest legality as a means to tackle deforestation.

Series: IUFRO World Series no. 35

Publisher: Vienna, Austria, International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO)

Publication Year: 2016

ISBN: 978-3-902762-70-2

ISSN: 1016-3263

Source: Daniela Kleinschmit, Stephanie Mansourian, Christoph Wildburger, Andre Purret (eds.) Illegal Logging and Related Timber Trade – Dimensions, Drivers, Impacts and Responses: A Global Scientific Rapid Response Assessment Report. 61-78, CIFOR’s library

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  • Effects of climate change and deforestation on potential of carbon sequestration and its implication in forest landscape restoration

Effects of climate change and deforestation on potential of carbon sequestration and its implication in forest landscape restoration

13 October, 2016
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FTA communications

Presentation by Mulugeta Mokria, Dr Aster Gebrekirstos, Dr Ermias Aynekakulu and Prof Dr Achim Brauning based on a study to investigate the current extent of forest degradation due to climate change in Ethiopia. The study also quantified the effects of tree dieback on aboveground carbon stock and the carbon sequestration potential. The research forms part of the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry.

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  • Beef in Brazil: Steps toward sustainability

Beef in Brazil: Steps toward sustainability

12 April, 2016
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FTA

It’s a wicked problem: reducing tropical deforestation while allowing countries to develop and cut poverty. Resolving means striking a balance between environmental, social and economic goals – and there will be trade-offs. This video ventures into the Amazon rainforest to assess the effects of Brazil’s strategy – aligning public and private interests to move toward sustainable production of beef.

Research on the drivers of deforestation and on sustainable supply chains is one big focus of Flagship 5 of the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA). Public private collaboration was key to first successes to curb deforestation in Brazil, says Flagship coordinator Pablo Pacheco, Principal Scientist at the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR).

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  • Modeling future deforestation and the impact on biodiversity in the Congo Basin

Modeling future deforestation and the impact on biodiversity in the Congo Basin

28 March, 2016
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FTA

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  • Managing and restoring natural tropical forests: discussion forum at GLF 2015

Managing and restoring natural tropical forests: discussion forum at GLF 2015

23 March, 2016
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FTA

Originally published at Global Landscapes Forum 2015

CIRAD’s Plinio Sist is an advocate of “tropical managed forests“. The Director of CIRAD’s Research unit BSEF made the case for the concept of tropical managed forests for example at the 2015 Global Landscapes Forum, with the discussion forum Managing and restoring natural tropical forests: Ensuring a sustainable flow of benefits for people in the context of global change. 

The obvious reasons to study tropical forests come from the sheer facts: they make up half of the earth’s forests, are home to half of the species on land, and they gather nearly a third of the terrestrial carbon stocks. At the same time, deforestation is concentrated in the tropics. The FAO estimated forest loss from 2010 to 2015 at close to nine million hectares (i.e. 90,000 km2) per year. That is nearly the size of Portugal or Hungary in forest cover lost every year.

Plinio Sist countered the view that deforestation equals logging and argued for Reduced Impact Logging (RIL) which disturbs the forest, but doesn’t destroy it. The main actors whose interests have to be balanced are forest companies, smallholder farmers and forest communities.

The discussion forum revolved around the challenges of

  • forest degradation, management and restoration (also in the context of landscape management)
  • tropical forests versus plantations
  • food production versus environmental services

Presentations focused on

  • FSC certification in the Brazilian Amazon,
  • concessions 2.0 in Central Africa, which suggests land-sharing through a hybrid of a company and a territorial institution
  • managing tropical forests in an era of change in South East Asia, in which FTA Director Robert Nasi and his co-presenter Michael Galante make the case for new approaches to managing logged-over forests and benefits
  • forest restoration as key component to tackle climate change, which argues that the underlying factors of deforestation have to do with governance

Also see the presentation here

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  • Why managing and restoring tropical forests matters

Why managing and restoring tropical forests matters
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FTA

CIRAD’s Plinio Sist is an advocate of “tropical managed forests“. The Director of CIRAD’s Research unit BSEF made the case for tropical managed forests for example at the 2016 Global Landscapes Forum, with the discussion forum Managing and restoring natural tropical forests: Ensuring a sustainable flow of benefits for people in the context of global change. 

The obvious reasons to study tropical forests come from the sheer facts: they make up half of the earth’s forests, are home to half of the species on land, and they gather nearly a third of the terrestrial carbon stocks. At the same time, deforestation is concentrated in the tropics. The FAO estimated forest loss from 2010 to 2015 at close to nine million hectares (i.e. 90,000 km2) per year. That is nearly the size of Portugal or Hungary in forest cover lost every year.

Plinio Sist countered the view that deforestation equals logging and argued for Reduced Impact Logging (RIL) which disturbs the forest, but doesn’t destroy it. The main actors whose interests have to be balanced are forest companies, smallholder farmers and forest communities.

The discussion forum revolved around the challenges of

  • forest degradation, management and restoration (also in the context of landscape management)
  • tropical forests versus plantations
  • food production versus environmental services

Presentations focused on

  • FSC certification in the Brazilian Amazon (slide 7-12),
  • concessions 2.0 in Central Africa, which suggests land-sharing through a hybrid of a company and a territorial institution (slide 13-25)
  • managing tropical forests in an era of change in South East Asia, in which FTA Director Robert Nasi and his co-presenter make the case for new approaches to managing logged-over forests and benefits (slide 26-34)
  • forest restoration as key component to tackle climate change, which argues that the underlying factors of deforestation have to do with governance (slides 35-47)

The presentation was originally published at Global Landscapes Forum 2015

Please contact us at cgiarforestsandtrees@cgiar.org if you need individual versions for each of the presentations.

 

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  • Zero-deforestation commitments in Indonesia: Governance challenges

Zero-deforestation commitments in Indonesia: Governance challenges

30 November, 2015
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cifor

Highlights

  • Zero-deforestation commitments are emerging rapidly in Indonesia. They already encompass a large portion of crude palm oil production and almost all the pulp and paper (P&P) sector; typically, they reflect the values of the “no-deforestation, no-exploitation (social) and no-peat” policies.
  • These commitments depend on definitions of ‘forests’ for their identification and conservation, which in turn rely on methodologies such as High Conservation Value and High Carbon Stock.
  • Early implementation has revealed that the palm oil sector is facing a number of governance challenges to achieve commitments: the legal framework is not systematically supportive of the pledges, and the government promotes a different vision of sustainability. Of note is the fact that the P&P sector is more advanced.
  • Integration of smallholders into sustainable value chains poses another challenge for the palm oil sector: traceability, better environmental performance and improved yields require urgent action. Legalization of smallholder operations is critical and goes beyond commitments, because it determines access to financing and certification, among others.
  • To be effective, zero-deforestation commitments must align public and private governance arrangements. This requires an agreement on visions of sustainability supported by public policies; progress on land tenure; enforcement of progressive regulations at national and regional levels; and the implementation of strong policies to rationalize the expansion of small and medium holdings of oil palm.
  • Legacy issues must also be addressed for the main palm oil and P&P groups: land restitution through due processes, support to smallholders and investments in land restoration are some promising avenues worth pursuing.

Source: CIFOR publications

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