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How Wildlife Can Boost the
Appeal of Tropical Forest Protection
A new study carried out by the Center for International Forestry
Research (CIFOR) and its partners provides compelling evidence
that paying to conserve billions of tons of carbon stored in
tropical forests could also protect orangutans, pygmy elephants and
other wildlife at risk of extinction.
Oil Palm Plantation in Desa Badau, Danau Sentarum
National Park, West Kalimantan. Photo: Ryan Woo.
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The study, published in the peer-reviewed journal
Conservation Letters, is one of the first to offer
quantitative evidence linking the drive to reduce carbon emissions
from forests with the push to preserve threatened mammal
biodiversity.
"Our study clearly demonstrates that payments made to
reduce carbon emissions from forests could also be an efficient and
effective way to protect biodiversity," says Oscar Venter, a
biologist at the University of Queensland in Australia and the
study's lead author. "We now need to see policy
discussions catch up with the science, because at the moment the
potential co-benefits of linking forest protection to biodiversity
are not getting the attention they deserve."
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CIFOR researchers, together with scientists from the University
of Queensland, The Nature Conservancy and the Great Ape Trust of
Iowa, examined the potential role of carbon payments in protecting
3.3 million hectares of tropical forest land in Kalimantan
(Indonesian Borneo).
The report, "Carbon Payments as a Safeguard for
Threatened Tropical Animals," considered the emissions
that would be released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide (CO2)
if the forest was cleared for development. Based on prices now
being paid for CO2 credits on global markets, they compared the
revenues that could be derived from protecting the forest and thus
avoiding a large amount of carbon emissions to the revenue that
would be derived from converting the forest to oil palm
plantations.
A giant Rhizophora apiculata found in Tanjung
Puting National Park storing some 10 ton carbon in the above ground
biomass, Central Kalimantan. Photo: Daniel Murdiyarso,
CIFOR.
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They found that if CO2 credits could be sold for US$10 to $33
per tonne, conserving the forest would be more profitable than
clearing the land for oil palm. In addition, forest conservation
would prevent 2.1 billion tonnes of carbon from entering the
atmosphere and preserve the habitat of some of the world's most
threatened mammal species living in these forests.
The study determined that 40 of Kalimantan's 46 threatened
mammals occur within areas slated for oil palm development.
Further, planned oil palm plantations in peat forest areas, where
carbon is most abundant (and therefore cheapest) contain almost
twice the mammal species density as more expensive areas. In other
words, there is a synergy between areas with high levels of
biodiversity and areas with an abundance of forest carbon.
Proposals to use carbon payments to conserve forests will be a
major topic at the United Nations Climate Change Conference
scheduled for December in Copenhagen. Among other issues,
negotiators will be discussing the creation of a global framework
to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation
(REDD). Under a REDD scheme, countries that reduce their
deforestation rates could gain credits for reduced emissions, which
would be sold on an international carbon market or compensated
through an international fund. Advocates of this approach hope that
the co-benefits of these kinds of mechanisms, such as saving
endangered species, could boost their appeal.
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"REDD offers important win-win opportunities for climate
and biodiversity protection," says Frances Seymour, director
general of CIFOR. "Ultimately, our goal is to help fashion an
agreement in Copenhagen that will allow tropical forests to become
part of a more comprehensive climate agreement - one that will
reduce emissions as well as produce co-benefits. There is already a
good case to be made for ending the exclusion of existing forests
in the next climate pact. This new evidence shows just one of the
many benefits that a REDD accord could have."
Deforestation and forest degradation account for 20 percent of
annual greenhouse gas emissions - more than the emissions from the
world's entire transport sector. Forested peat lands are
particularly rich with carbon, and the region studied in the
report, Kalimantan, has nearly 6 million hectares of peat forest
land.
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Destruction of a stand of Perupuk trees on the
River Entesan, Loa Sakoh Area , East Kalimantan. Photo: Yayat
Ruchiat.
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The study focused on Kalimantan because of its significance to
Indonesia's oil palm industry, its biological diversity and its
wealth of carbon-rich peat lands. Recently, Indonesia has overtaken
Malaysia as the world's biggest producer of palm oil, and
Kalimantan is the current frontier for oil palm development,
according to the authors of the study.
The authors noted that overall, for the forest areas studied,
carbon credits could be made competitive with oil palm if they
could be sold on the carbon markets that emerged as part of efforts
to comply with emissions targets tied to the 1992 Kyoto Protocol.
This agreement expires in 2012. Kyoto compliance markets allow
countries and industrial polluters to meet government-mandated
limits on carbon emissions by purchasing credits tied to reductions
achieved elsewhere. These credits fluctuate in value but currently
sell for around $20 per tonne of CO2, or around $5.4 per tonne of
carbon. However, carbon stored in existing forests is not currently
traded on the Kyoto markets.
Forest-based carbon credits can be sold today on what are known
as voluntary carbon markets, where governments and private
companies can voluntarily offset their emissions through the
purchase of credits. The price on these markets also varies but is
currently between $1 and $2 per tonne of carbon. Even at this low
price, there is so much carbon per hectare in the carbon rich peat
forest of Kalimantan that it would be worth more preserved than
developed for oil palm, says Douglas Sheil, a co-author and former
CIFOR scientist, who is currently serving as director of the
Institute of Tropical Forest Conservation in Uganda.
"This tells us that even a REDD mechanism that sells carbon
at a relatively low price could carry benefits for both climate
change and biodiversity in some very important areas," says
Sheil. "Now we need to see if these opportunities exist in
other regions."
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