8—Global Forest Governance Flashcards
How is a forest defined?
A forest is a land area covered by trees with a tree canopy cover of at least 10-30%
Why are forests so important?
- They host roughly 80% of the terrestrial diversity
- Significantly contribute to human well-being through their ecosystem services:
- trees for timber, firewood, fibre and charcoal
- shelter, energy, water protection, and medicine
- are the foundation for indigenous knowledge and their cultural integrity depends on them
- Forests contribute to climate change mitigation, absorbing and capturing the carbon dioxide produced by anthropogenic activities
- to meet the Paris Agreement’s goals for the next decade, tropical tree cover is estimated to provide 23 per cent of the climate mitigation
What does forest degradation refer to?
Forest degradation indicates the loss of the forest’s capacity to provide its intrinsic services and goods
What does deforestation indicate?
- Deforestation refers to the permanent destruction of forests and conversion of these land for other purposes
- 13 million hectares (approximately the size of Greece) of tropical rainforests are disappearing each year. The Global South and the Boreal zone of Eurasia in the Global North are mostly suffering from these practices.
What are the drivers behind the increase in deforestation and forest degradation?
- The drivers are mainly human-induced:
- The land use change for:
- mining
- oil and gas extraction
- agricultural expansion (palm oil, coffee, soy, cacao …)
- cattle grazing
- Wood use:
- fuel - individual
- logging, furniture, paper … - industries
- this trade often happens illegally and unsustainably
- The land use change for:
What are the effects of such actions?
- a threat to the diverse collection of species and their living conditions
- Drought, soil erosion and desertification
- Since half of the water in the rainforest is held within plants, deforestation can disturb the water cycle and influence the water supply of whole regions
- not only does cutting trees reduce the possibility to absorb carbon dioxide, but it also adds carbon dioxide to the atmosphere
- According to the World Resources Institute, if tropical deforestation were a country, it would follow China and the US in terms of carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions
Which are the three conventions indirectly related to forests adopted in the 1970s?
- They are:
- The 1971Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance
- The 1973Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES)
- The 1975World Heritage Convention
How do CBD, UNFCC and UNCDD tackle some forest-related issues?
- CBD protects global forest biodiversity conservation from deforestation
- The Nagoya Protocol regulates relations between people rightfully owning lands and industries benefitting from their resources
- 2020 Aichi Biodiversity Strategic Goals and Targets:
- Target 5 demands by 2020 at least a halving of the rate of loss of natural habitats, including forests, and a significant reduction in degradation and fragmentation.
- Target 7 names forestry as one of the areas to be sustainably managed to ensure the conservation of biodiversity
- UNCDD focuses on the conservation and sustainable management of land and water resources
- While UNFCCC’s CDM potential was large, activities related to forests were quite limited. This was because only afforestation and reforestation activities were eligible and emissions from other activities such as tropical deforestation and forest degradation were excluded (67 forest-related activities out of 7854 CDM projects
- Including forests in CDM project was difficult due to eligibility criteria:
- To be eligible, a project must demonstrate that the carbon sequestration added by the project would not have been possible without financial investments or other support, or that without the revenue from carbon credits it would not have occurred because of legal, technological, or ecological barriers
- A second complexity was leakage. It could occur, for example, when local farmers clear their pastureland for reforestation, but clear forests elsewhere to establish new pastures. To avoid the occurrence of leakage, CDM projects always have to demonstrate that they actually achieve real, measurable, and verifiable GHG emission reductions
- Including forests in CDM project was difficult due to eligibility criteria:
What is legality verification? How could it rescue global forest governance?
Legality verification means providing economic incentivises to complying logging industries. These incentives could be either eco-labelling or legality verification. In Legality verification producers are simply recognised for complying with legal requirements, even if they are not gold standards.
Who would bear the cost of economic incentives?
The cost of complying cannot be so high that it countervails economic incentives. Economic incentives could be financed by customer awareness (customers paying more for green products) or governments demanding stricter sustainability requirements or trade agreements.
How to verify product compliance?
Supply chain tracking is a means to verify product compliance.
How did markets address illegal deforestation? Were those measures efficient?
US and EU regulations require industries to prove that the products they are selling do not come from illegal activities. This market mechanism resulted in more efficiency than eco-labelling, centred on good willingness.
Are market mechanisms more efficiently regulating commercial forest practices than public policy?
Market mechanisms are more efficient than public policy when it comes to regulating commercial forest practices, by demanding compliance to acquiring market access. However, land use changes causing deforestation, such as palm oil plantations, mining and oil and gas extractions, are better regulated by public policy (CFR. Indonesia)
