L15 Payments for ecosystem services

Question 1

How many hectares of forest was converted between 1980and 2012?

Answer 1

154 million

Question 2

What is down listing?

Answer 2

removal of species from the Federal Lists of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants, as a result of successful recovery efforts

Question 3

Why is conservation difficult in lower income countries?

Answer 3

Is very expensive to retain and conserve habitats for a species,, needs >10x increase in budget

Question 4

What is PES?

Answer 4

Payments for ecosystem services - incentives offered to farmers or landowners in exchange for managing their land to provide some sort of ecological service

Question 5

What is an ecosystem service?

Answer 5

The provision of a natural resource or process that is valued by humankind

Question 6

What four categories does the millennium ecosystem assessment define?

Answer 6

Supporting services
Provisioning services
Regulating services
Cultural services

Question 7

What are supporting services?

Answer 7

services that are necessary for the production if all other ecosystem services, such as soil formation, photosynthesis, nutrient recycling and seed dispersal

Question 8

What are provisioning services?

Answer 8

Provide products that are obtained from the ecosystem, such as water, food, timber and fibre

Question 9

What are regulating services?

Answer 9

Benefits that are obtained from the regulation of ecosystem processes, such as climax, flood and disease regulation, and water purification

Question 10

What are cultural services?

Answer 10

Non material benefits, such as aesthetics, recreation and mental wellbeing

Question 11

How did Constanza value ecosystem services and why?

Answer 11

In monetary terms, aimed at foresting an understanding of the economic benefits of conservation

Question 12

What are the three stages to valuation?

Answer 12

Economic farming
Monetisation
Commodification

Question 13

What are the terms used in ecosystem framing?

Answer 13

Ecosystems are capital, ecosystem functions are viewed as services

Question 14

What is monetisation?

Answer 14

Capital or services given exchange values

Question 15

What is commodification?

Answer 15

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

Question 16

What are the dangers of commodification?

Answer 16

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

Question 17

What does anthropocentric mean?

Answer 17

regarding humankind as the central or most important element of existence

Question 18

Why is it essential to find a way that PES can fund the protection of tropical forest and biodiversity?

Answer 18

Conservation loss happening at a massive scale, and need a big solution that can raise huge amounts of money to protect remote forests

Question 19

What is the trend seen in energy use across the globe?

Answer 19

An inbalance across the countries

Question 20

What does REDD + stand for?

Answer 20

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

Question 21

How does REDD+ work?

Answer 21

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

Question 22

What are the benefits of carbon payments?

Answer 22

Beneficial when high carbon stores correlate with high biodiversity

Question 23

What is the global overlay of carbon and biodiversity?

Answer 23

Overlap in distribution layers for biodiversity and the layer of carbon, see a strong correlation

Question 24

What areas show high species biodiversity but low carbon?

Answer 24

Andes, Himalayas, Atlantic forest

Question 25

Why is there a need to introduce economic costs for protecting carbon within biodiverse place?

Answer 25

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

Question 26

What is the high carbon land area in borneo currently being used for?

Answer 26

Intensive logging and forest conversion to plantations

Question 27

What are the types of forest in borneo?

Answer 27

Dryland (dipterocarp) and peatswamp

Question 28

How can REDD+ save drylands forests?

Answer 28

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

Question 29

Why is protection of drylands forests in borrow (Sunderland) unlikely?

Answer 29

Carbon price for protection is very high

Question 30

How can REDD+ save peatland forests?

Answer 30

Have to compete with the oil palm industry, but the timber value is low in peat swamps.

Question 31

What is the Norway-Indonesia REDD+ pact

Answer 31

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

Question 32

What forests are protected by the two year moratorium in Indonesia?

Answer 32

Protected all peatlands >50 cm deep, excluding >35Mha of drylands logged forest

Question 33

Why are the peatlands being protected?

Answer 33

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

Question 34

What are the high carbon land areas in the tropical andes currently being used for?

Answer 34

Low intensity cattle farming

Question 35

What is carbon enhancement via natural regeneration?

Answer 35

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

Question 36

What are the three interrelated questions that need to be asked to determine whether REED+ can enhance regrowth

Answer 36

How rapidly does carbon return in secondary forests?
Are there biodiversity co-benefits?
What is the cost $t-1 CO2?

Question 37

What happens to carbon stock over time in a secondary forest?

Answer 37

Stock increases with age - half recovered within 30 years

Question 38

What happens to species richness in secondary forest recovery?

Answer 38

Rare bird species will recover, occurred probability still lower than original, but much higher than before regeneration

Question 39

How is carbon cost estimated?

Answer 39

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

Question 40

At what point does REDD+ breakeven in terms of compensating farm abandonment?

Answer 40

$2.00/tCO2, so can buy out low-profit farmland cheaply

Question 41

How does REED+ threaten to recentralise forest governance?

Answer 41

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

Question 42

What is leakage in terms of the REDD+ scheme?

Answer 42

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+