Tag Archives: forest

2009 Forest Voluntary Carbon Markets: New Report

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Ecosystem Marketplace and Forest Trends have just released the “State of the Forest Carbon Markets 2009: Taking Root and Branching Out” report. The report provides comprehensive developments on carbon emission reductions in forestry sector and the traded valumes of carbon credits at the voluntary carbon market.

Abstract of this report is given below.

This report was created to increase transparency and answer fundamental questions about the supply of forestry-based carbon credits, such as transaction volumes, credit prices, hectares influenced and tenure rights. It outlines the aggregate numbers from our survey of 61 project developers1 and 34 intermediaries representing 226 projects across 40 countries. This report is entirely based on information volunteered by these project developers and intermediaries. Hence, numbers presented are not completely exhaustive, and should be considered conservative.

Ecosystem Marketplace tracked projects generating credits over the past 20 years in both the voluntary and compliance markets. The voluntary category includes the Over the Counter (OTC) and Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) markets. The compliance category includes the New South Wales Greenhouse Gas Reduction Scheme (NSW GGAS), as well as the Kyoto Protocol-driven Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), Joint Implementation (JI), New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme (NZ ETS) and Kyoto Assigned Amount Units (AAUs). Because we are comparing transactions across markets and standards, it is important to note that assets transacted vary considerably. For example, a temporary Certified Emissions Reduction (tCER) under the CDM may be a different asset than a Voluntary Carbon Unit (VCU) under the Voluntary Carbon Standard. However, these assets are generally referred to as carbon dioxide tonnes (tCO2).

Full report (88 pages) can be downloaded here at:
http://147.202.71.177/~foresttr/documents/index.php?pubID=2384

Khmer Monks Rewarded for Protecting Forests

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Pact is proud to announce that its partner organization, the Monks Community Forestry (MCF), a group of Buddhist monks in northwest Cambodia, has won the prestigious United Nations sponsored Equator Prize celebrating outstanding community efforts to conserve biodiversity and reduce poverty. MCF and Venerable Bun Saluth have also received special recognition from a jury of leading conservation and development professionals. Among this year’s 25 Equator Prize winners, only four other communities have received this special recognition.

Since 2001, the monks of the Samraong Pagoda, located in Oddar Meanchey Province near Cambodia’s border with Thailand, have been protecting 18,261 hectares of forest from illegal clearing and incursion. It is now one of Cambodia’s largest and best protected community forests (MCF).

Pact and the Cambodian Forestry Administration have provided support to help the MCF establish community forestry legal status in Cambodia. Pact is now working with the MCF, the Cambodian Government, and with 12 other community forests in the area, on one of Cambodia’s first climate change mitigation and carbon offset projects. The project will earn carbon credits from the voluntary market to support forest protection efforts and contribute to improving local livelihoods. According to Pact’s Program Director, Amanda Bradley, “The MCF has collaborated effectively with local communities to turn an area of uncontrolled logging into an excellent example of best practice in conservation. We’re very excited about the potential of the carbon markets to reinforce and support these local efforts.”

Appalled at the ongoing destruction of his country’s forests, MCF’s Venerable Bun Saluth initiated protection of this area in 2001. With few resources, he and the monks of his pagoda have proven themselves to be powerful conservationists: they have demarcated forest boundaries, raised environmental awareness among local communities, developed co-management committees with local villagers, linked with government authorities and NGOs, and significantly reduced forest crime in the MCF through the development of unique approaches to law enforcement based on Buddhist principles.

The example of the MCF has demonstrated that Buddhist monks can be important allies for the conservation community: they have proven effective at deterring forest crime and can be powerful messengers for environmental protection. Their impressive achievements sprang from the monks’ belief that by protecting the MCF they are following the Buddha’s example and the principles he set out in his teachings to eliminate the suffering of all beings and to live ethically.

This small forest community in northwest Cambodia is now linked with 128 other Equator Prize winners from around the world who have been chosen as representatives of best practices in grassroots movements that combine biodiversity conservation and poverty reduction. Venerable Bun Saluth joins 25 of this year’s winners to receive the prize and US$5,000 in an award ceremony in New York on September 20th.

For further information visit our web site:

http://pactworld.org/cs/redd

Cambodia’s National Forest Programme Online

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In 1997 the Royal Government of Cambodia (RGC) initiated the process of developing a National Forest Programme (NFP) by establishing a national committee on forest policy reform with support from FAO, UNDP and WB (FAO 2002). In 2002, the secretariat of the committee in collaboration with the GTZ-funded Cambodian-German forestry project formulated a national forest policy statement (RGC 2002). Subsequently, a new Forest Law was promulgated in 2002, a Forestry Administration was established in 2003, and a Sub Decree on Community Forestry
adopted in 2005.

In November 2004, the RGC established a Technical Working Group on Forestry and Environment (TWG-F & E) to provide a mechanism for government-donor coordination to support and strengthen development activities within the forestry and environment sectors (Details are available at www.twgfe.org).

Since September 2006 the Forest and Landscape, University of Copenhagen has supported the Forestry Administration in initiating the current NFP process including LFA workshops on planning (September 2006) and support in conducting two preparatory NFP workshops, one internal in FA (January 2007) and one with multiple stakeholders (March 2007). In spite of earlier initiatives outlined above, the development of a coherent National Forest Programme has yet to be completed in Cambodia. The preparation of the NFP will follow a participatory planning approach that encourages the involvement of all forest-dependent actors at village, commune, district, provincial, national and international levels. Throughout the preparatory process, a National Forest Programme Task Force was established. In October 2007, the Task Force conducted its first meeting to agree on the Annual Action Plan 2007-2008.

The purpose of the NFP is to promote the conservation and sustainable management and use of forest resources in Cambodia. The NFP will aim to meet local, national and global needs by coordinating national and international partnerships to manage, use, protect and regenerate forest resources for the benefit of present and future generations of Cambodians. The preparation of a NFP in Cambodia, whilst adopting a consultative approach, will emphasize national sovereignty with regard to the management of the country’s forest resources, and the need for country leadership and responsibility.

The NFP, as a framework for planning, will provide strategic orientation for the forestry sector in harmony with other sectors of the national economy. As a framework for action and investment, the NFP will also facilitate concerted and coordinated implementation of programmes and activities by all stakeholders based on mutually agreed objectives and strategies.

Click here to download Nationa Forest Programme in Cambodia

Cambodia’s Jungle Woman returns to Jungle

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Rochom P’ngieng, now 29 years old, first disappeared into thick hilly jungle in 1989 when she was a little girl. She was “discovered” in early 2007 and reunited with her family.

However, attempts to reintegrate her have failed. She has not learnt either of the local languages, Khmer or Phnang, prefers to crawl rather than walk, refuses to wear clothes and has made several attempts to return to the forest where she grew up. Her father, Sal Lou, a policeman, said that she had been making progress recently, but disappeared on Tuesday evening (25 May 2010).

Read more at http://www.telegraph.co.uk

Stand Volume and Carbon Stocks in Cambodian Evergreen Forest: Part 1

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For citation: Sasaki, N., Yoshimoto, A., Benefits of tropical forest management under the new climate change agreement—a case study in Cambodia. Environ. Sci. Policy (2010), doi:10.1016/j.envsci.2010.04.007

1. Forests in Cambodia

The Cambodian government defines forests for the United Nations Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) as land having forest canopy cover of 10% and tree height of 5 m and estimated that forests covered 10.9 million ha or 59.1% of the country’s total land area in 2006 (Technical Working Group on Forestry and Environment, 2007) declining from 11.3 million ha in 2002. Total forest cover is comprised of deciduous forest (43.2%), evergreen forest (33.8%), semi-evergreen or mixed forest (12.5%), and mangrove and freshwater-flooded forests (8.9%). Wood shrubland, bamboo, and forest plantations cover only a small proportion of the total forest area (Fig. SM1). Because deforestation and uncontrolled logging continue, many important tree species in Cambodia have been placed on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List (So, 2004). In addition to these important tree species, Cambodia’s forests are also home to a unique but critically endangered species of Kouprey or wild cow (Bos sauveli).

By law, commercial logging is allowed only in evergreen, mixed, and deciduous forests. Because of their ecological, social, and environmental importance, mangrove and freshwater-flooded forests were designated as protected areas by Royal Decree in 1993, along with an additional 3.1 million ha of forests. As of 2010, this protection was still in effect. At present, there are 16 forest concessions covering a total of 3.4 million. The remainder is for unspecified purposes, such as for population resettlement and for plantations of rubber, teak, oil palm, eucalyptus or acacia, and other industrial crops. A selective felling cycle of 25 years is allowed in Cambodia. In response to illegal logging (67% of all harvested timber as reported by DAI [1998]), the lack of technical capability, and the suggestions of the international community, logging operations in Cambodia were temporarily suspended in 2002, and this suspension remains in effect today. However, as a result of the lack of proper ownership rights to protect the suspended forest concessions coupled with an increase in unregulated land concessions granted for industrial crop plantations (MAFF, 2010), land clearing and anarchic land encroachments have been reported across the country (Ty, 2005).

Prior to the late 1980s, Cambodian forests were fully stocked with highly commercial timber species (in terms of tree species composition, stem density, and stand volume) because of inaccessibility as a result of prolonged decades of civil wars, landmines, and the total lack of rural security. Coincident with the logging ban in Thailand and the withdrawal of Vietnamese troops from Cambodia in 1989, logging by all Cambodian fighting factions intensified along the borders with Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam. Since the 1991 Paris Peace Accord ending the civil wars in Cambodia, internationally supported industrial logging activities began, and almost all of the highly valued forests were logged intensively at highly unsustainable logging rates (World Bank, 2006). Cambodian forests are owned by the government’s Forestry Administration (FA), and the FA grants concession rights to logging companies through public bidding. The FA also recognizes prescribed access and use rights of local and indigenous communities (FA, 2006). About 92% of the Cambodian population lives in rural areas and depends on fuel wood from forests for daily cooking and warmth; this makes forests an important resource for sustainable development in Cambodia. The success of future REDD-plus agreements in Cambodia as well as in other developing countries depends on taking into account the needs of the rural population.

Due to its high stocks of commercial and valuable timber species compared to mixed and deciduous forests (Kim Phat et al. 2000, 2002a, 2002b), a large area of evergreen forest has been logged legally and illegally over the last three decades. Such unsustainable logging has caused rapid degradation, and in the worse case, the loss of evergreen forest to industrial crop plantations. This report has been prepared as supplemental material to the published article. In this supplemental report we describe the forest inventory data, data analysis, and results for use in the main article.

Download full paper here