L15 Payments for ecosystem services Flashcards
How many hectares of forest was converted between 1980and 2012?
154 million
What is down listing?
removal of species from the Federal Lists of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants, as a result of successful recovery efforts
Why is conservation difficult in lower income countries?
Is very expensive to retain and conserve habitats for a species,, needs >10x increase in budget
What is PES?
Payments for ecosystem services - incentives offered to farmers or landowners in exchange for managing their land to provide some sort of ecological service
What is an ecosystem service?
The provision of a natural resource or process that is valued by humankind
What four categories does the millennium ecosystem assessment define?
Supporting services
Provisioning services
Regulating services
Cultural services
What are supporting services?
services that are necessary for the production if all other ecosystem services, such as soil formation, photosynthesis, nutrient recycling and seed dispersal
What are provisioning services?
Provide products that are obtained from the ecosystem, such as water, food, timber and fibre
What are regulating services?
Benefits that are obtained from the regulation of ecosystem processes, such as climax, flood and disease regulation, and water purification
What are cultural services?
Non material benefits, such as aesthetics, recreation and mental wellbeing
How did Constanza value ecosystem services and why?
In monetary terms, aimed at foresting an understanding of the economic benefits of conservation
What are the three stages to valuation?
Economic farming
Monetisation
Commodification
What are the terms used in ecosystem framing?
Ecosystems are capital, ecosystem functions are viewed as services
What is monetisation?
Capital or services given exchange values
What is commodification?
Transformation of a service into commodities or objects of trade. Inclusion of non-marketed services into pricing systems and markets
Creation of institutional structures for sale and exchange
What are the dangers of commodification?
Humans prioritised by Arthropocentric views
Material elements of nature traded since the birth of markets
Controversy over where to draw the line over what should and shouldn’t be commodified
What does anthropocentric mean?
regarding humankind as the central or most important element of existence
Why is it essential to find a way that PES can fund the protection of tropical forest and biodiversity?
Conservation loss happening at a massive scale, and need a big solution that can raise huge amounts of money to protect remote forests
What is the trend seen in energy use across the globe?
An inbalance across the countries
What does REDD + stand for?
Reducing Emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, , the plus is added to include the roles of biodiversity conservation, sustainable forestry and enhancements of forest carbon stocks
How does REDD+ work?
mechanism is to make forests more valuable standing than they would be cut down by creating a financial value for the carbon stored in the trees. Once this carbon is standardized and quantified, REDD+ will allow polluters to purchase cheap carbon offsets (or “pollution licenses”) from countries in the South instead of reducing their own greenhouse gas emissions at source
What are the benefits of carbon payments?
Beneficial when high carbon stores correlate with high biodiversity
What is the global overlay of carbon and biodiversity?
Overlap in distribution layers for biodiversity and the layer of carbon, see a strong correlation
What areas show high species biodiversity but low carbon?
Andes, Himalayas, Atlantic forest
Why is there a need to introduce economic costs for protecting carbon within biodiverse place?
Some areas might have high carbon, but have high costs, or low carbon and be chap, and the markets look to pay the lowest $t-1 CO2 possible. There needs to be something to account of the loss of potential revenue that could have been gained from using the area for alternative profits, this is the opportunity cost
What is the high carbon land area in borneo currently being used for?
Intensive logging and forest conversion to plantations
What are the types of forest in borneo?
Dryland (dipterocarp) and peatswamp
How can REDD+ save drylands forests?
In competition with timber and oil palm industries, and so a REED+ value needs to be paid that meets the current Net present value of the forest, with profits coming from the timber and oil. Any shortfall must be met from other sources
Why is protection of drylands forests in borrow (Sunderland) unlikely?
Carbon price for protection is very high
How can REDD+ save peatland forests?
Have to compete with the oil palm industry, but the timber value is low in peat swamps.
What is the Norway-Indonesia REDD+ pact
Indonesia signed a pact with the Norwegian government for a 2-year moratorium on new permits for conversion of peatlands and natural forest to land uses such as industrial timber or oil-palm plantations, Norway will help build Indonesia’s capacity to monitor and protect its forests, which are decreasing in area. If deforestation rates in Indonesia decline after 2 years, the central government will receive up to US$1 billion from Norway
What forests are protected by the two year moratorium in Indonesia?
Protected all peatlands >50 cm deep, excluding >35Mha of drylands logged forest
Why are the peatlands being protected?
Moratorium areas are indistinct from non-moratorium and recently cleared areas
Deep peats store a lot of carbon - so more worth investing in than the drylands, and have a low carbon price
What are the high carbon land areas in the tropical andes currently being used for?
Low intensity cattle farming
What is carbon enhancement via natural regeneration?
The creation of carbon pools by natural means, the woods are restocked by seeds that fall and geminate in-situ, secondary forest regrowth will increase over time
What are the three interrelated questions that need to be asked to determine whether REED+ can enhance regrowth
How rapidly does carbon return in secondary forests?
Are there biodiversity co-benefits?
What is the cost $t-1 CO2?
What happens to carbon stock over time in a secondary forest?
Stock increases with age - half recovered within 30 years
What happens to species richness in secondary forest recovery?
Rare bird species will recover, occurred probability still lower than original, but much higher than before regeneration
How is carbon cost estimated?
Look at the opportunity cost of stopping production e.g. cattle pasture, plus the cost if managing and implementing a carbon project, and viewing this of a 30-year time horizon. This is used to calculate a long term certified emissions reduction scheme
At what point does REDD+ breakeven in terms of compensating farm abandonment?
$2.00/tCO2, so can buy out low-profit farmland cheaply
How does REED+ threaten to recentralise forest governance?
Decentralisation is aimed at increasing the rights and responsibilities in protecting forest areas, but REED+ may interrupt this tree, as inInequitable forest management operated by national governments not local people, causing alienation from resources
What is leakage in terms of the REDD+ scheme?
Protection in one location may simply displace the deforestation to elsewhere, meaning payment has no benefit, the fear of leakage is a major block to international approval of REDD+
