scholarly journals How community forest management performs when REDD+ payments fail

Author(s):  
Amy Collins ◽  
Mark N Grote ◽  
Tim Caro ◽  
Aniruddha Ghosh ◽  
James H Thorne ◽  
...  

Abstract The Reduced Emissions in Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) initiative uses payments for ecosystem services as incentives for developing countries to manage and protect their forests. REDD+ initiatives also prioritize social (and environmental) co-benefits aimed at improving the livelihoods of communities that are dependent on forests. Despite the incorporation of co-benefits into REDD+ goals, carbon sequestration remains the primary metric for which countries can receive payments from REDD+, but after more than ten years of REDD+, many site-specific programs have failed to complete the carbon verification process. Here, we examine whether the REDD+ social co-benefits alone are sufficient to have slowed deforestation in the absence of carbon payments on Pemba, Tanzania. Using satellite imagery (Landsat archive), we quantified forest cover change for the period before (2001-2010) and after (2010-2018) the launch in 2010-11 of Pemba island’s REDD+ Readiness project. We then compared rates of forest cover change between shehia (administrative units) that were part of REDD+ Readiness intervention and those that were not, adjusting for confounding variables and the non-random selection of REDD+ shehia with a statistical matching procedure. Despite considerable variation in forest outcomes among shehia, the associated co-benefits with the Pemba REDD+ project had no discernible effect on forest cover change. Likewise, we did not detect an effect of socioecological covariates on forest cover change across all shehia, though island-wide human population growth since 2012 may have played a role. These findings are unsurprising given the failure to secure carbon payments on Pemba and indicate that co-benefits alone are insufficient to reduce deforestation. We conclude that better oversight of all-involved parties is needed to ensure that REDD+ interventions satisfactorily conclude the process of securing a mechanism for carbon payments, if slowing deforestation is to be achieved.

2019 ◽  
Vol 106 ◽  
pp. 101976 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andika Putraditama ◽  
Yeon-Su Kim ◽  
Andrew Joel Sánchez Meador

Author(s):  
Sushila Rijal ◽  
Kuaanan Techato ◽  
Saroj Gyawali ◽  
Nigel Stork ◽  
Megh Raj Dangal ◽  
...  

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (17) ◽  
pp. 2756
Author(s):  
Shankar Tripathi ◽  
Rajan Subedi ◽  
Hari Adhikari

An account of widespread degradation and deforestation in Nepal has been noticed in various literature sources. Although the contribution of community forests (CF) on the improvement of forest cover and condition in the Mid-hill of Nepal is positive, detailed study to understand the current situation seems important. The study area (Tanahun District) lies in the Gandaki Province of western Nepal. The objective of this study was to estimate the forest cover change over the specified period and to identify factors influencing the change. We used Landsat images from the years 1976, 1991, and 2015 to classify land use and land cover. We considered community perception in addition to the forest cover map to understand the different causes of forest cover change. Forest cover decreased from 1976 to 1991 annually at a rate of 0.96%. After 1991, the forest increased annually at a rate of 0.63%. The overall forest cover in the district regained its original status. Factors related to increasing forest cover were emigration, occupation shift, agroforestry practices, as well as particularly by plantation on barren lands, awareness among forest users, and conservation activities conducted by local inhabitants after the government forest was handed over to community members as a community forest management system.


2018 ◽  
pp. 38-44
Author(s):  
B. K. Pokharel ◽  
D. R. Uprety ◽  
R. R. Niraula ◽  
P. R. Pokharel

A study was conducted in the Churia region in 2014 to assess the change in forest cover as an outcome of the performance of various forest management regimes and silvicultural practices with the main objective to find the gap between those two. Geographic Information System (GIS) and Remote Sensing (RS) were used to compare the satellite imageries for the period of 1992 to 2014 in order to analyse the state of forest cover change. The demarcation of community forest boundaries was conducted based on available boundary maps and transferred to Google earth and GIS platform. Results showed that overall forest cover in the Churia region was increased by 7500 ha (1%) in 22 years, i.e. 1.35 million ha (76%) in 1992 to 1.36 million ha (77%) in 2014. The rate of deforestation in the Churia region was reduced as compared to the national average. However, degradation of landscape was visible at riverbeds and cultivation lands close to the riverbeds. It was also found that the area of dense forest was increased by 42,000 ha, whereas the area covered by bushes and grassland was reduced by 39,000 ha. The study further showed that there was a decline in cultivated land by 20,000 ha. Comparing the forest cover change in community forests with that of other management regimes, silvicultural practices in community forest areas have brought relatively better positive changes in the forest condition. It may be due to periodic silviculture operations carried out collectively by local communities. In the assessment, however, various elements of tenure rights and responsibilities of community, government and private forest and tree owners were identified and key silvicultural practices adopted by these regimes were highlighted as the drivers of positive or negative outcomes of forest cover change. Banko JanakariA Journal of Forestry Information for Nepal Special Issue No. 4, 2018, Page : 36-44 


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 2131
Author(s):  
Jamon Van Den Hoek ◽  
Alexander C. Smith ◽  
Kaspar Hurni ◽  
Sumeet Saksena ◽  
Jefferson Fox

Accurate remote sensing of mountainous forest cover change is important for myriad social and ecological reasons, but is challenged by topographic and illumination conditions that can affect detection of forests. Several topographic illumination correction (TIC) approaches have been developed to mitigate these effects, but existing research has focused mostly on whether TIC improves forest cover classification accuracy and has usually found only marginal gains. However, the beneficial effects of TIC may go well beyond accuracy since TIC promises to improve detection of low illuminated forest cover and thereby normalize measurements of the amount, geographic distribution, and rate of forest cover change regardless of illumination. To assess the effects of TIC on the extent and geographic distribution of forest cover change, in addition to classification accuracy, we mapped forest cover across mountainous Nepal using a 25-year (1992–2016) gap-filled Landsat time series in two ways—with and without TIC (i.e., nonTIC)—and classified annual forest cover using a Random Forest classifier. We found that TIC modestly increased classifier accuracy and produced more conservative estimates of net forest cover change across Nepal (−5.2% from 1992–2016) TIC. TIC also resulted in a more even distribution of forest cover gain across Nepal with 3–5% more net gain and 4–6% more regenerated forest in the least illuminated regions. These results show that TIC helped to normalize forest cover change across varying illumination conditions with particular benefits for detecting mountainous forest cover gain. We encourage the use of TIC for satellite remote sensing detection of long-term mountainous forest cover change.


2003 ◽  
Vol 79 (1) ◽  
pp. 132-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis Yemshanov ◽  
Ajith H Perera

We reviewed the published knowledge on forest succession in the North American boreal biome for its applicability in modelling forest cover change over large extents. At broader scales, forest succession can be viewed as forest cover change over time. Quantitative case studies of forest succession in peer-reviewed literature are reliable sources of information about changes in forest canopy composition. We reviewed the following aspects of forest succession in literature: disturbances; pathways of post-disturbance forest cover change; timing of successional steps; probabilities of post-disturbance forest cover change, and effects of geographic location and ecological site conditions on forest cover change. The results from studies in the literature, which were mostly based on sample plot observations, appeared to be sufficient to describe boreal forest cover change as a generalized discrete-state transition process, with the discrete states denoted by tree species dominance. In this paper, we outline an approach for incorporating published knowledge on forest succession into stochastic simulation models of boreal forest cover change in a standardized manner. We found that the lack of details in the literature on long-term forest succession, particularly on the influence of pre-disturbance forest cover composition, may be limiting factors in parameterizing simulation models. We suggest that the simulation models based on published information can provide a good foundation as null models, which can be further calibrated as detailed quantitative information on forest cover change becomes available. Key words: probabilistic model, transition matrix, boreal biome, landscape ecology


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