Final Report Summary - I-REDD+ (Impacts of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation and Enhancing Carbon Stocks)
Executive Summary:
The negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change have since 2005 included considerations of a mechanism that could ensure reduced greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) by reducing deforestation and forest degradation and by enhancing forest carbon stocks (REDD+) in developing countries. Although REDD+ is often listed as one of the most successful negotiation topics at the Conferences of the Parties (COP) – most recently reiterated at the COP20 in Lima, Peru in December 2014 – an international agreement has yet to be reached. While this lack of agreement is mainly political, on the scientific side, there is also a range of inherent obstacles for the implementation of REDD+.
The EU-FP7 funded I-REDD+ project has been addressing some of these obstacles by obtaining better understanding of how the implementation of REDD+ mechanisms:
1) may reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and maintain or enhance existing stocks of carbon in vegetation and soil of various land cover types;
2) will impact livelihoods, welfare and equity in local communities with forest-based economies;
3) can ensure equitable benefit distribution in different governance settings; and
4) can be monitored efficiently by both remote sensing and participatory approaches.
I-REDD+ focused specifically on forest degradation and worked in the uplands of Southeast Asia, more specifically in Yunnan, China, northern Laos, northern Vietnam and Kalimantan, Indonesia. The main results of I-REDD+ work show that belowground biomass has been underestimated in shifting cultivation landscapes and the new allometrics developed are needed for improved carbon accounting during land use changes in such areas. Monitoring of carbon stock changes in these dynamic landscapes is possible and cost-effective with community involvement and this could also reinforce the provision of control rights to local communities as the current governance schemes related to benefit distribution mechanisms are mainly top-down and not ceding anything but use right to the local level. Satellite based forest monitoring will be essential for REDD+ and while our results show limitations for the use of SAR for deriving historic baselines, new approaches with dense Landsat image time series are able to capture detailed forest changes in dynamic landscapes. At the national level, MODIS combined with high-resolution data is promising, even if some fine-scale information in mosaic landscapes are not captured by MODIS alone. Finally, we have demonstrated both with local case studies and more theoretical approaches that, due to the extremely high opportunity costs of other land uses and the difficulty of predicting regime shifts in land use, it will be very challenging to implement effective REDD+ in terms of actually reducing GHG emissions.
The results of I-REDD+ have already been widely disseminated, both at various consultations and conferences in the Southeast Asian partner countries and at the UNFCCC COPs 18-20 and at other international events as mentioned above. Thus, I-REDD+ results are already likely to be considered in policy-making at national level in Southeast Asia and at the international REDD+ negotiations.
Project Context and Objectives:
The negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change have since 2005 included considerations of a mechanism that could ensure reduced greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from land use change in forest rich developing countries. This mechanism started with a focus on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation (RED), but it was soon realized that forest Degradation was equally important (REDD) and later again the prospects for enhancing forest carbon stocks were also included as a plus (REDD+). REDD+ was in the early stages of negotiations assumed to have a range of co-benefits such as improved livelihoods and biodiversity conservation, but it was questioned whether these benefits would in reality occur and a range of so-called safeguards were included. Thus, currently (February 2015) REDD+ is known as ‘Reducing emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation and the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks in developing countries’.
Although REDD+ is often listed as one of the most successful negotiation topics at the Conferences of the Parties (COP) – most recently reiterated at the COP20 in Lima, Peru in December 2014 – an international agreement has yet to be reached. There are signs of increasing political commitment as funds for a donor-driven mechanism are being made available. On the other hand, political difficulties and sceptical parties to the negotiations caused yet another postponement of the negotiations and concern that it will be difficult to reach an agreement at COP21 in Paris in 2015. On the scientific side, there are both good and bad news as technologies are increasingly improving to, for example, ensure effective monitoring of REDD+, but at the same time there is an increasing amount of scientific evidence that points to inherent difficulties in the implementation of REDD+. Some of these challenges and opportunities of REDD+ have been identified by the EU-FP7 funded I-REDD+ project, which is contributing with an interdisciplinary approach to resolving issues that are necessary for REDD+ to become successful.
The objectives of I-REDD+ were to enhance the understanding of how the implementation of a REDD+ mechanisms:
1) may reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and maintain or enhance existing stocks of carbon in vegetation and soil of various land cover types;
2) will impact livelihoods, welfare and equity in local communities with forest-based economies;
3) can ensure equitable benefit distribution in different governance settings; and
4) can be monitored efficiently by both remote sensing and participatory approaches.
Moreover, a main objective has been to inform national and international policy arenas on the impacts of proposed REDD+ policies.
Other REDD+ projects have had a strong focus on the humid tropical lowlands. In I-REDD+, we focused specifically on forest degradation in the upland forest-agriculture frontiers of Southeast Asia. Field sites were located in Xishuangbanna Prefecture of Yunnan Province, China; near the National Protected Area Nam Et Phou Loey in Huaphan Province, Laos; in Con Cuong District, Nghe An Province, Vietnam; and in Kutai Barat District, East Kalimantan, Indonesia. These sites represent gradients in terms of ecological conditions, economic development and governance structures and the specific field sites are all characterized by being dominated currently or in the very recent past by shifting cultivation. They are all experiencing land use changes but in different ways and at different pace. In the Chinese sites, much of the forest and former shifting cultivation land have already been converted to rubber plantations. Forests remain at higher altitudes and it is interesting to see what the fate of rubber plantations will be if the current low prices of rubber remain. In the Vietnamese sites, shifting cultivation has also almost ended and been replaced by forest plantations and natural forest regrowth. In the Lao sites, traditional shifting cultivation is still practiced with forests in many stages of regrowth, but cash crops such as hybrid maize are changing this system rapidly. Shifting cultivation is also still present in the Indonesian sites although strong pressure from timber, oil palm and mining companies is likely to accelerate already occurring land use changes. All sites are particularly interesting from the point of view of reducing emissions from forest degradation as remaining forests are degraded from their natural state either by timber extraction or by shifting cultivation that has created a mosaic landscape with secondary forests of many different ages.
Thus, Southeast Asia represents a region where REDD+ activities will be implemented amidst complex land use systems, tenure regimes and, possibly, conflicting interests. It is also a region where forest and land use transitions are occurring at a rapid speed and there are potentially high gains to be made from REDD+ in terms of avoided emissions of GHG while local costs could also be high if payments do not compensate adequately for alternative income sources.
The specific objectives of I-REDD+ have thus been to develop and test methods for:
1. Quantifying GHG emissions and removals from the dominant forest types and agricultural systems in the study areas. These include secondary successional vegetation – e.g. grass and bushes, young open-canopy tree communities, and mature closed-canopy tree communities. The project proposed to analyse all five approved C-pools (above- and belowground C-stocks in vegetation, litter, dead wood and soil C-stocks) and fluxes of non-CO2 GHGs in order to understand the trade-off between effort and accuracy which is crucial to the cost-effective implementation of REDD+.
2. Developing remote sensing and community based methods for monitoring of land use change and C-stocks in areas with forest and alternative land use systems.
3. Assessing potential disbursement mechanisms for REDD+ payments under different global payment scenarios and different governance and institutional structures in the case countries.
4. Assessing the benefits and costs of REDD+ for livelihoods at local levels (REDD+ rent vs. opportunity and transaction costs) as well as socio-cultural ‘costs’ of changing lifestyles and development pathways.
5. Developing and testing a monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) system within five critical areas of relevance to REDD+: GHG emissions, land use change, forest resources, governance, and livelihood impacts. This objective was modified as developing and testing MRV systems were not relevant since implementation of the REDD+ projects that I-REDD+ had planned to follow in the study areas was delayed and has yet to start at the time of writing.
6. Informing the development of future REDD+ implementation policies in the light of the above, including their feasibility given the opportunities and constraints of methods and the new knowledge obtained.
7. Investigating country-specific differences and develop approaches that are appropriate in a range of different institutional, political, and socioeconomic settings.
8. Disseminating the methodological advancements and thematic insights to local, regional and national and international stakeholders through training, collaboration and publications of policy briefs, guidelines, and high-impact journal publications. The international policy arena negotiating the REDD+ mechanism is a specific target for I-REDD+ dissemination such as UNFCCC conferences of the Parties (COPs).
The main challenges related to these objectives were outlined in an overview paper that set the point of departure for the project activities, see Mertz et al. 2012. The forgotten D: challenges of addressing forest degradation in complex mosaic landscapes under REDD+. Geografisk Tidsskrift-Danish Journal of Geography, 112(1): 63-76.
Project Results:
The project started in January 2011 and funding ended in December 2014, but research activities will nonetheless continue well into 2015 as not all results of the six thematic work packages (WP) have been published yet. All results and publications are continuously made available at the project website: www.i-redd.eu.
An important initial cross-WP work was a review of how forest degradation has been and should be addressed under REDD+ (see first I-REDD+ policy brief). This work has been followed up by a stock-taking of the results produced in I-REDD+ presented in Deliverable 7.5 and the fourth policy brief entitled ‘Lessons for REDD+ from complex mosaic landscapes’, presented at COP20 in Lima, Peru in December 2014. This policy brief was also based on the outcomes of the International Conference ‘Carbon-Land-Property’ that was organized by I-REDD+ in Copenhagen in July 2014 and had 120 participants. Two additional cross-WP policy briefs on community based monitoring (presented at COP18, Doha, 2012) and on advances in carbon stock measurement in complex landscapes (presented at COP19, Warsaw, 2013) have also been published earlier.
WP2 focuses on GHG emissions and due to the comprehensive field work and data analysis needed, the main focus has been on the Lao and Indonesian sites. WP2 reviewed allometrics for both above and belowground biomass, and has developed a revised allometric for shifting cultivation regrowth which significantly changes carbon stock estimates, compared to conventional models. While above-ground biomass was generally overestimated by existing allometrics, belowground biomass was more than 50% larger according to the developed allometric. Uncertainty and diversity of below-ground carbon estimates was quantified, and a model describing carbon stocks in fallow systems as function of cultivation intensity was developed. Soil carbon was shown to be less sensitive to land use change than proposed by existing models. Evaluation of permanganate oxidisable C as a labile carbon pool that is more sensitive to land use changes proved partly successful as a low-technology soil carbon proxy, while it does not serve as an early indicator of soil carbon dynamics.
WP3 worked on developing improved remote sensing based methods for monitoring land use change and C-stocks, and the aim was specifically to address monitoring problems related to forest degradation in mosaic landscapes and to develop a scalable approach suitable for national deforestation monitoring. (1) Dense Landsat time series between 2000 and 2012 were used to map forest clearings and fallow age. These maps were than combined with a carbon bookkeeping model to assess the historic carbon emissions in the Huaphan province, Laos. The results of this carbon assessment showed a decrease in regional carbon storage over the ten-year period, but also high variability in carbon emissions across space and time. Our study highlights the need for frequent EO data in mosaic landscapes, as few, periodic observations would be unreliable to construct reference emission levels. (2) We tested the potential of hyperspectral remote sensing data from the Hyperion sensor to characterize forest fallow vegetation age. While short (less than 4 years) and longer fallow rotations (5-13 years) were distinguishable with acceptable accuracy, a finer differentiation of fallow age was not possible due to fine-scale heterogeneity of landscape mosaics, and due to limitations of current hyperspectral sensor data. The upcoming EnMAP mission will provide satellite-based hyperspectral remote sensing data at a much higher quality than is currently available, which will very likely improve landscape scale analyses. Finally, (3) we demonstrate a method to integrate coarse-resolution remote sensing data from MODIS and fine-scale remote sensing data for national scale forest monitoring. MODIS captured deforestation well across different forest types for pixels that were more than 75% deforested. Smaller disturbances were more difficult to detect accurately with MODIS. Overall, applying a sample-based approach by integrating wall-to-wall MODIS and Landsat samples improved deforestation area estimates and provided statistically sound estimates of uncertainty.
In WP4, community based monitoring is compared to scientist executed monitoring in order to understand the feasibility of bottom up approaches to forest biomass monitoring. The main results obtained is that the ability of local communities to monitor the AGB in their forest increases with repetition of monitoring activities to an extent where, for eight out of nine study sites in China, Laos, Vietnam and Indonesia, the difference between the monitoring done by professional foresters and the community monitors was statistically insignificant. Furthermore, we found that over two separate rounds of monitoring, community monitoring became cheaper and more cost effective than professional monitoring. In our experience much of this success was based on the focus on simple methods that community monitors were able to apply correctly and consistently with a very limited amount of training and supervision.
In WP5 the potential costs and benefits of REDD+ for local livelihoods and food security are assessed through opportunity costs analysis and participatory simulation. WP5 extends the analysis of opportunity costs to the landscape level so as to account for ecosystem goods and services associated with land use patterns and their implications in the broader context of livelihood systems. Opportunity costs analysis then feeds participatory land-use simulations where the possible impacts of hypothetical REDD+ schemes on carbon sequestration, livelihoods and food security are explored with local communities. A high variability in REDD+ feasibility was observed between study sites. In Laos, local communities showed a significant interest in REDD+ motivated by limited market/cash income opportunities, although such opportunities are now rapidly expanding and causing conversion of shifting cultivation to more permanent cultivation of maize. In China there was little interest due to the high opportunity costs of rubber plantations. In Vietnam, the potential for REDD+ implementation would be limited by the poor conditions of forests and the time required for reforestation and forest regeneration. In Indonesia, REDD+ may arrive too late to compete with the recent wave of rubber, oil palm and mining operations. As REDD+ monitoring is likely to include safeguards, WP5 also analyzed a series of case studies to derive a range of indicators for participatory livelihood monitoring in areas with REDD+ in Southeast Asia.
WP6 analyzes how REDD+ payments may work under different payment scenarios and under different governance and institutional structures in the four case countries. We completed four key steps: 1) analysis of existing BDMs (Benefit Distribution Mechanisms) in the four case-study countries; 2) global and local comparative studies of potential BDMs; and 3) recommendations for REDD+. 4) development of policy briefs for each country. In the first step, ten existing BDMs were analysed in the four target countries, six of which are top-down state types of governance. In two cases government and International NGOs share authoritative rights and in the last two government and local communities share control rights. The top-down approaches require most financial resources and are perceived as the least just. In all cases, there was little information available on their performance in terms of environmental improvements. In the second step, the perceptions of different BDMs were also assessed at village level. Villagers generally prefer local direct findings as this is the only way they expect to be given control of access and exclusion rights. However, there was a high diversity in preferences and even acceptance of increased inequality as it is recognized that households will be engaged differently in REDD+. Overall, no single solution is relevant for all contexts. At the global level, a comparative study of BDMs in 13 countries revealed that in most countries with top-down state governance, environmental services are not paid for based on performance and thus it is unclear whether market based payments will work. Moreover, in most countries, local communities are given use rights, but not control rights. Overall, experiences with existing BDMs make it doubtful that governance of REDD+ will lead to more just management of forests unless decentralized and participatory approaches to BDMs that involve local communities actively are implemented. Based on those findings, the general policy recommendation was developed suggesting that contextualized and decentralized BDMs would benefit from meaningful local participation. Specific recommendations were drawn for the improvement of REDD+ effectiveness and justice in four areas: governance (i.e. control and authoritative rights); the fund mechanism (i.e. transaction rights); forest tenure (i.e. use rights) and capacity-building needs. These results were presented in four policy briefs in English as well as national languages in order to reach a broader audience and wider dissemination.
As a synthesizing work package, WP7 works towards guiding the improvement of measurement, reporting and verification (MRV). The key message of WP7 findings suggests that the uncertainty inherent in both retrospective and prospective forest reference levels (FRLs) cannot be completely resolved. As a result, the additionality of investments into safeguarding forest carbon in REDD+ actions is difficult to ensure. As evident in all study sites and as shown empirically in the case study sites, land-use transitions are often surprising and unforeseeable. We therefore question the use of FRLs based on historic data, particularly in the complex mosaic landscapes of Southeast Asia that frequently experienced rapid, nonlinear change. The uncertain future poses a critical challenge for the implementation of REDD+ and suggests that REDD+ MRV systems should not rely on the prediction of future carbon dynamics for prescribing compensation payments in tons of carbon equivalents. Instead, different approaches to safeguard forest carbon and associated co-benefits are needed, such as more direct interventions to safeguard forest carbon and co‐benefits. In addition, research in this work package revealed that the underlying drivers for forest carbon losses originate from global drivers that are outside the influence of national policies. As a result, REDD+ schemes as proposed by the UNFCCC are likely not effective because the salient drivers cannot be deflected.
Overall, the main results of I-REDD+ work show that belowground biomass has been underestimated in shifting cultivation landscapes and the new allometrics developed are needed for improved carbon accounting during land use changes in such areas. Monitoring of carbon stock changes in these dynamic landscapes is possible and cost-effective with community involvement and this could also reinforce the provision of control rights to local communities as the current governance schemes related to benefit distribution mechanisms are mainly top-down and not ceding anything but use right to the local level. Satellite based monitoring will be essential for REDD+ and while our results show limitations for the use of SAR, MODIS combined with high-resolution data is promising at the national level even if some fine-scale information in mosaic landscapes are not captured by MODIS. For the regional and sub-regional level, new approaches with dense Landsat image time series capture detailed forest changes in dynamic landscapes. Finally, we have demonstrated both with local case studies and more theoretical approaches that, due to the extremely high opportunity costs of other land uses and the difficulty of predicting regime shifts in land use, it will be very challenging to implement effective REDD+ in terms of actually reducing GHG emissions.
Potential Impact:
Impacts.
The I-REDD+ research project originally responded to a call text that asked for research to “Improve and facilitate harmonisation of monitoring, accounting and verification aspects related to REDD/LULUCF in view of a post-2012 agreement. Identify and assess the effectiveness of relevant mitigation policies, at international level and contribute to the implementation of a post-2012 international agreement on climate change”. As it is well known, neither a post-2012 international agreement on climate change nor any sub-agreement on REDD/LULUCF have been reached in the UNFCCC negotiations. Nonetheless, I-REDD+ has worked intensively to influence the negotiations of these agreements as well as their preparations for their implementation at local level in the I-REDD+ target countries of Indonesia, Laos, Vietnam and China.
I-REDD+ has considerably advanced the state of the art in science for the understanding of opportunities and challenges for REDD+ implementation. Some of these have already been published and include the demonstration of how local communities can cost-effectively and with high accuracy measure carbon stocks in forests (published in Ecology and Society and Forests); how benefit distribution mechanisms need to include more decentralization and local participation to be successful and just (published in Land Use Policy and Earthscan book); and that regime shifts in land systems represent a serious obstacle to obtaining additionality and permanence in REDD+ (published in Global Environmental Change and Environmental Management). In addition, several important results are in preparation for publication, including a discovery that belowground carbon stocks are underestimated in forest fallows that have been under shifting cultivation; development of new remote sensing based methods for carbon accounting in landscapes with shifting cultivation and degraded forests; and how the opportunity costs of land uses such as rubber, oil palm and maize are so high that REDD+ is unlikely to be feasible in many areas.
Impacts on policy processes and society in general are more difficult to measure at this early stage but through dialogue with both international REDD+ negotiators and staff responsible for REDD+ at national and local level in the four countries in Southeast Asia, it is clear that I-REDD+ has provided valuable inputs. For example, the results that demonstrate the weaknesses in how forest reference levels are translated into business-as-usual scenarios have been recognized as an important stumbling block for effective REDD+, and negotiators are calling for this issue to be addressed and not just ignored as a technical issue that can be resolved. It will be detrimental to an agreed REDD+ mechanism if ten years down the line it is realized that the additional emission reductions achieved were much lower than what was paid for – or the opposite case where REDD+ projects were never established because historical deforestation was too low, but subsequent regime shifts caused rapid decline in forests deemed ineligible for REDD+.
The results related to how communities can cost-effectively and accurately measure carbon stocks in their forests received considerable media attention, including broadcasts by BBC News, Mongabay and numerous other media. This, along with results that illustrate that benefit distribution mechanisms do not work without local participation, brought considerable attention to this issue and helped strengthen the agenda of the proponents who see the UNFCCC safeguards as central for a future REDD+ agreement. Community involvement in monitoring can be an important way of engaging stakeholders in the REDD+ implementation and thereby also make it more likely to succeed. Few REDD+ eligible governments, however, see community monitoring as being feasible in national monitoring systems, but even though REDD+ will be a national mechanism, it will always have sub-national implications that will involve forest users to some extent. Hence, I-REDD+ has made a considerable effort strengthen the positions at international, national and local level that see community involvement in REDD+ as essential.
The results related to how belowground carbon stocks in forest fallows are underestimated are yet to make a significant impact as they are under publication, but as these landscapes cover vast areas of the tropics, they are likely to have significant impact on distribution of emissions between different land use types. This will affect policies on how REDD+ deals with these landscapes and they may be considerably more valuable for climate change mitigation than previously thought. In addition, the remote sensing techniques developed specifically for monitoring these landscapes will be able to integrate these new carbon stock results to adjust larger scale carbon accounting estimates. Thus, the combination of better carbon stock assessment and more detailed remote sensing based forest monitoring will be highly useful for national forest and carbon monitoring systems.
At the national level, I-REDD+ has through a range of efforts led by the project partners in Indonesia, Laos, Vietnam and China brought these concerns to the REDD+ agenda, such as in REDD+ offices or task forces at national and local level. Especially at local level, and particularly in Laos, I-REDD+ has contributed to capacity building of local staff that have been made aware of the complex nature of REDD+ through the research activities. This has also taken place at community level, especially through the participatory land use planning (PLUP) exercises carried out in each of the eight villages targeted for I-REDD+ research. This made communities highly aware of what REDD+ may or may not do and provided them with a better background for decision-making if they become involved in actual REDD+ activities.
Overall, the I-REDD+ project has documented a number of weaknesses that need to be accounted for in future REDD+ projects and programmes. These findings may not be a contribution to making REDD+ implementation easier or reaching an international agreement more likely, but they help to avoid fundamental mistakes that may jeopardize successes in emission mitigation from land-use change. International negotiations may reach agreement on technical and political issues, but these will not be useful if fundamental elements of the REDD+ system are ignored.
Dissemination activities
The I-REDD+ project produced at an early stage a dissemination plan that outlined all dissemination activities apart from scientific publication that is presented under results. These activities targeted international, national and local levels of policy as well as the broader public internationally and in the partner countries in Southeast Asia. The activities have been as follows:
I) Project website
The I-REDD+ project website www.i-redd.eu has been continuously updated and expanded and the public site contains all necessary information about the project activities, field sites, project partners and participants as well as project events. Moreover, all publications of I-REDD+ are presented on the public site with direct links to the electronic versions of the papers where available. The internal part of the site is being consistently used for uploading project documents such deliverables, policy briefs, and other publications, including draft papers. The website will be kept online and continuously updated for at least 1-2 years as new publications of I-REDD+ work emerge.
A separate website was developed for the final conference entitled Carbon-Land-Property (http://carbonlandproperty.dk/ see more information below) to convey all relevant information related to the conference participants and the public.
Tracking of website visits was not done, but there has been considerable feed-back stating that both websites have been good resources for finding material about the projects, its activities and about REDD+ in general.
II) Policy briefs
Four general policy briefs have been produced by I-REDD+, all of which were finalized prior to and distributed at the UNFCCC Conference of the Parties in 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014. The policy briefs are entitled:
1. I-REDD+ Policy Brief no. 1 (2011). The forgotten D: challenges of addressing forest degradation in REDD+.
2. I-REDD+ Policy Brief no. 2 (2012). Understanding, measuring and governing changes in forest carbon stocks in complex landscapes.
3. I-REDD+ Policy Brief no. 3 (2013). Opportunities for REDD+ in degraded forests and complex landscapes.
4. I-REDD+ Policy Brief no. 4. (2014). Lessons for REDD+ from complex mosaic landscapes.
The briefs were moreover sent directly to the European Union REDD+ negotiators and distributed to wide range of other international and national events where REDD+ issues were discussed. The fourth policy brief was moreover translated into Lao and distributed to a wide range of stakeholders in Laos.
In addition, a number of other policy briefs were produced for specific activities in I-REDD+. The work on benefit distribution mechanisms was presented in four country specific policy briefs that were all translated into national languages. These briefs have been widely distributed in the four target countries and were presented at national consultations on REDD+ and benefit sharing. The governance group has moreover produced two policy briefs entitled ‘REDD+: Justice effects of technical design’ and ‘REDD+ Safeguards for Vietnam: Key Issues and the Way Forward’.
The work on community based forest monitoring also resulted in a policy brief entitled ‘Policy brief on cost-effective methods for monitoring forest biomass and land-use change’ that was distributed as part of policy brief series at University of Copenhagen. Finally, a brief entitled ‘Local Mitigation Actions Supporting the Low Emission Development Plan in Kutai Barat District, Indonesia’ was produced in both English and Indonesian for local dissemination (Johana et al. 2013).
III) I-REDD+ conferences
Two international conferences were organized by I-REDD+. The ‘Conference on science based measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) systems for REDD+ in Southeast Asia’ was aimed at regional policy-makers in Southeast Asia and held on 9th November 2012 in Hanoi, Vietnam. The focus of the conference was on how science can contribute to developing Measurement, verification and reporting (MRV) systems. The conference had 60 participants.
The main I-REDD+ event was the international conference ‘Carbon-Land-Property’ which was held at University of Copenhagen on 1-4th July 2014. Keynote speakers included leading researchers on REDD+: Prof. Arun Agrawal, University of Michigan, USA; Prof. Arild Angelsen, University of Life Sciences, Norway; Dr. Christine Padoch, Director of Livelihoods Programme, Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR); Dr. Esteve Corbera, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain; Dr. Frédéric Achard, Joint Research Centre; Dr. Sandra Brown, Winrock Foundation, USA; Prof. Nancy Peluso, University of California Berkeley. Moreover, the conference was opened by Head of Department and president of the IUFRO Niels Elers Koch and Dr. Anastasios Kentarchos, representing the European Commission (DG Research). While the conference was mainly a scientific event, presentations by REDD+ negotiators from the European Commission (Dr. Michael Bucki) and the Danish Government (Dr. Peter Iversen) ensured the link to important policy arenas. A total of 120 participants from all over the World attended the conference. See more on http://carbonlandproperty.dk
IV) Side-events at UNFCCC COPs 2012-2014 and other conferences
I-REDD+ organized two side-events at EU Pavilion of the UNFCCC COPs. At COP18 in Doha, November 2012, a side-event entitled ‘Is the window of opportunity for REDD+ closing?’ was organized jointly with the REDD-ALERT project and I-REDD+ had two presentations. At COP19 in Warsaw, I-REDD+ organized a full side-event entitled ‘Opportunities for REDD+ in degraded and complex landscapes’ with four presentations. At COP20 in Lima in December 2014, the final outcomes of I-REDD+ was presented at a side-event in EU Pavilion entitled ‘LULUCF & REDD+: Forest Potential for Climate Change Mitigation in the Post-Kyoto Framework’. This event was organized by the Swedish University of Agriculture and I-REDD+ was invited to present. All events had a good audience of 40-60 participants, including negotiators, who engaged in discussions of the work presented. The policy briefs mentioned above were all presented and distributed at the COPs.
In addition to the I-REDD+ conferences and COPs, I-REDD+ work has been presented at wide range of international, national and local events aimed at scientific, policy and broader audiences. In total, the project has been presented with more than 130 different types of dissemination efforts.
V) Dissemination in Southeast Asian countries
Dissemination of I-REDD+ results in the countries selected for case studies in Southeast Asia has been another high priority of I-REDD+, both to ensure that decisions on REDD+ are taken on an informed basis and to contribute to capacity building on REDD+. As mentioned above, four policy briefs on the governance work were translated into national languages and several other activities were carried out in each country:
In China, an I-REDD+ Dissemination Workshop was organized by Kunming Institute of Botany in Jinghong, Yunnan, in September 2014 and had 53 participants from government, research, business, and NGOs. The main aim was to present I-REDD+ results and to discuss how payment for environmental services can be improved in the Chinese context.
In Indonesia, an event was organized by WWF-Indonesia and ICRAF in Balikpapan, East Kalimantan, entitled ‘First district-scale green economy plan in Indonesia launched in Kutai Barat’. I-REDD+ results were presented, including the brief mentioned above on local mitigation actions (Johana et al. 2013), and the event was also accompanied by a range of other policy briefs addressing different REDD+ relevant issues:
- Develop REDD+ Readiness Through Participatory Land Use Mapping and Planning in Indonesia: Case of Kutai Barat (in Indonesian)
- Creating Community Forest in Indonesia: Case of Kutai Barat, East Kalimantan
- Participatory Land Use Planning, Case of Batu Majang Village, East Kalimantan, Indonesia (in Indonesian)
- Community Conservation Area in Kutai Barat, East Kalimantan, Indonesia (in Indonesian)
In Laos, the fourth general I-REDD+ policy briefs was translated into Lao and disseminated in various policy arenas in the country that deal with REDD+. In addition, I-REDD+ results were presented to the Research Forum for Development held by National University of Laos and the National Agricultural and Forestry Research Institute on 17-18 December 2014. These activities were organized by National University of Laos. As a post-project activity, a national dissemination workshop is planned on 10th March in Huaphan Province where most I-REDD+ work have taken place.
In Vietnam, the I-REDD+ paper on effective, efficient and equitable REDD+ was translated to Vietnamese and distributed at various REDD+ policy events. Moreover, a book based on I-REDD+ results and destined for teaching at university level on REDD+ has been written. The book is currently in the process of being published. These activities were organized by Center for Agricultural Research and Ecological Studies, Vietnam National University of Agriculture.
Collaboration with other projects and institutions
Agreements were made with two REDD+ implementing organizations, the German funded CliPAD project in Laos and the international NGO SNV that works regionally. The purpose of the agreements was for I-REDD+ to follow activities regarding implementation of REDD+ on the ground and for the organizations to get access to data from I-REDD+. Unfortunately, the CliPAD Project has so far been unable to implement their REDD+ activities in Laos and SNV implementation in Vietnam did not start before I-REDD+ field research was completed. Therefore, it was not possible to assess the impacts of any actual REDD+ implementation before the project ended. This has not been crucial for obtaining results as the I-REDD+ research was designed for this fairly likely risk-scenario to occur.
Contact with the other EU FP7 funded project on REDD+, REDD-ALERT, was established in 2011 and I-REDD+ ideas and plans were presented at the third annual REDD-ALERT project meeting in Dalat, Vietnam, September 2011. Contact with the REDD-ALERT coordinator has been maintained since this meeting, including the joint side-event at COP18 in Doha.
Existing agreements are still in force and I-REDD+ works in close collaboration with a range of new research projects. These include e.g. ‘Property and Citizenship in Developing Societies’ that co-funded the July 2014 conference with funds from the Danish Research Council for Independent Research, the ‘Ecosystem Services and Well-Being’ project funded by the ESPA mechanism of the United Kingdom Natural Environment Research Council, and the Global Land Project under FutureEarth, which has endorsed I-REDD+ as one of its core activities.
List of Websites:
http://www.i-redd.eu
The negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change have since 2005 included considerations of a mechanism that could ensure reduced greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) by reducing deforestation and forest degradation and by enhancing forest carbon stocks (REDD+) in developing countries. Although REDD+ is often listed as one of the most successful negotiation topics at the Conferences of the Parties (COP) – most recently reiterated at the COP20 in Lima, Peru in December 2014 – an international agreement has yet to be reached. While this lack of agreement is mainly political, on the scientific side, there is also a range of inherent obstacles for the implementation of REDD+.
The EU-FP7 funded I-REDD+ project has been addressing some of these obstacles by obtaining better understanding of how the implementation of REDD+ mechanisms:
1) may reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and maintain or enhance existing stocks of carbon in vegetation and soil of various land cover types;
2) will impact livelihoods, welfare and equity in local communities with forest-based economies;
3) can ensure equitable benefit distribution in different governance settings; and
4) can be monitored efficiently by both remote sensing and participatory approaches.
I-REDD+ focused specifically on forest degradation and worked in the uplands of Southeast Asia, more specifically in Yunnan, China, northern Laos, northern Vietnam and Kalimantan, Indonesia. The main results of I-REDD+ work show that belowground biomass has been underestimated in shifting cultivation landscapes and the new allometrics developed are needed for improved carbon accounting during land use changes in such areas. Monitoring of carbon stock changes in these dynamic landscapes is possible and cost-effective with community involvement and this could also reinforce the provision of control rights to local communities as the current governance schemes related to benefit distribution mechanisms are mainly top-down and not ceding anything but use right to the local level. Satellite based forest monitoring will be essential for REDD+ and while our results show limitations for the use of SAR for deriving historic baselines, new approaches with dense Landsat image time series are able to capture detailed forest changes in dynamic landscapes. At the national level, MODIS combined with high-resolution data is promising, even if some fine-scale information in mosaic landscapes are not captured by MODIS alone. Finally, we have demonstrated both with local case studies and more theoretical approaches that, due to the extremely high opportunity costs of other land uses and the difficulty of predicting regime shifts in land use, it will be very challenging to implement effective REDD+ in terms of actually reducing GHG emissions.
The results of I-REDD+ have already been widely disseminated, both at various consultations and conferences in the Southeast Asian partner countries and at the UNFCCC COPs 18-20 and at other international events as mentioned above. Thus, I-REDD+ results are already likely to be considered in policy-making at national level in Southeast Asia and at the international REDD+ negotiations.
Project Context and Objectives:
The negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change have since 2005 included considerations of a mechanism that could ensure reduced greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from land use change in forest rich developing countries. This mechanism started with a focus on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation (RED), but it was soon realized that forest Degradation was equally important (REDD) and later again the prospects for enhancing forest carbon stocks were also included as a plus (REDD+). REDD+ was in the early stages of negotiations assumed to have a range of co-benefits such as improved livelihoods and biodiversity conservation, but it was questioned whether these benefits would in reality occur and a range of so-called safeguards were included. Thus, currently (February 2015) REDD+ is known as ‘Reducing emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation and the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks in developing countries’.
Although REDD+ is often listed as one of the most successful negotiation topics at the Conferences of the Parties (COP) – most recently reiterated at the COP20 in Lima, Peru in December 2014 – an international agreement has yet to be reached. There are signs of increasing political commitment as funds for a donor-driven mechanism are being made available. On the other hand, political difficulties and sceptical parties to the negotiations caused yet another postponement of the negotiations and concern that it will be difficult to reach an agreement at COP21 in Paris in 2015. On the scientific side, there are both good and bad news as technologies are increasingly improving to, for example, ensure effective monitoring of REDD+, but at the same time there is an increasing amount of scientific evidence that points to inherent difficulties in the implementation of REDD+. Some of these challenges and opportunities of REDD+ have been identified by the EU-FP7 funded I-REDD+ project, which is contributing with an interdisciplinary approach to resolving issues that are necessary for REDD+ to become successful.
The objectives of I-REDD+ were to enhance the understanding of how the implementation of a REDD+ mechanisms:
1) may reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and maintain or enhance existing stocks of carbon in vegetation and soil of various land cover types;
2) will impact livelihoods, welfare and equity in local communities with forest-based economies;
3) can ensure equitable benefit distribution in different governance settings; and
4) can be monitored efficiently by both remote sensing and participatory approaches.
Moreover, a main objective has been to inform national and international policy arenas on the impacts of proposed REDD+ policies.
Other REDD+ projects have had a strong focus on the humid tropical lowlands. In I-REDD+, we focused specifically on forest degradation in the upland forest-agriculture frontiers of Southeast Asia. Field sites were located in Xishuangbanna Prefecture of Yunnan Province, China; near the National Protected Area Nam Et Phou Loey in Huaphan Province, Laos; in Con Cuong District, Nghe An Province, Vietnam; and in Kutai Barat District, East Kalimantan, Indonesia. These sites represent gradients in terms of ecological conditions, economic development and governance structures and the specific field sites are all characterized by being dominated currently or in the very recent past by shifting cultivation. They are all experiencing land use changes but in different ways and at different pace. In the Chinese sites, much of the forest and former shifting cultivation land have already been converted to rubber plantations. Forests remain at higher altitudes and it is interesting to see what the fate of rubber plantations will be if the current low prices of rubber remain. In the Vietnamese sites, shifting cultivation has also almost ended and been replaced by forest plantations and natural forest regrowth. In the Lao sites, traditional shifting cultivation is still practiced with forests in many stages of regrowth, but cash crops such as hybrid maize are changing this system rapidly. Shifting cultivation is also still present in the Indonesian sites although strong pressure from timber, oil palm and mining companies is likely to accelerate already occurring land use changes. All sites are particularly interesting from the point of view of reducing emissions from forest degradation as remaining forests are degraded from their natural state either by timber extraction or by shifting cultivation that has created a mosaic landscape with secondary forests of many different ages.
Thus, Southeast Asia represents a region where REDD+ activities will be implemented amidst complex land use systems, tenure regimes and, possibly, conflicting interests. It is also a region where forest and land use transitions are occurring at a rapid speed and there are potentially high gains to be made from REDD+ in terms of avoided emissions of GHG while local costs could also be high if payments do not compensate adequately for alternative income sources.
The specific objectives of I-REDD+ have thus been to develop and test methods for:
1. Quantifying GHG emissions and removals from the dominant forest types and agricultural systems in the study areas. These include secondary successional vegetation – e.g. grass and bushes, young open-canopy tree communities, and mature closed-canopy tree communities. The project proposed to analyse all five approved C-pools (above- and belowground C-stocks in vegetation, litter, dead wood and soil C-stocks) and fluxes of non-CO2 GHGs in order to understand the trade-off between effort and accuracy which is crucial to the cost-effective implementation of REDD+.
2. Developing remote sensing and community based methods for monitoring of land use change and C-stocks in areas with forest and alternative land use systems.
3. Assessing potential disbursement mechanisms for REDD+ payments under different global payment scenarios and different governance and institutional structures in the case countries.
4. Assessing the benefits and costs of REDD+ for livelihoods at local levels (REDD+ rent vs. opportunity and transaction costs) as well as socio-cultural ‘costs’ of changing lifestyles and development pathways.
5. Developing and testing a monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) system within five critical areas of relevance to REDD+: GHG emissions, land use change, forest resources, governance, and livelihood impacts. This objective was modified as developing and testing MRV systems were not relevant since implementation of the REDD+ projects that I-REDD+ had planned to follow in the study areas was delayed and has yet to start at the time of writing.
6. Informing the development of future REDD+ implementation policies in the light of the above, including their feasibility given the opportunities and constraints of methods and the new knowledge obtained.
7. Investigating country-specific differences and develop approaches that are appropriate in a range of different institutional, political, and socioeconomic settings.
8. Disseminating the methodological advancements and thematic insights to local, regional and national and international stakeholders through training, collaboration and publications of policy briefs, guidelines, and high-impact journal publications. The international policy arena negotiating the REDD+ mechanism is a specific target for I-REDD+ dissemination such as UNFCCC conferences of the Parties (COPs).
The main challenges related to these objectives were outlined in an overview paper that set the point of departure for the project activities, see Mertz et al. 2012. The forgotten D: challenges of addressing forest degradation in complex mosaic landscapes under REDD+. Geografisk Tidsskrift-Danish Journal of Geography, 112(1): 63-76.
Project Results:
The project started in January 2011 and funding ended in December 2014, but research activities will nonetheless continue well into 2015 as not all results of the six thematic work packages (WP) have been published yet. All results and publications are continuously made available at the project website: www.i-redd.eu.
An important initial cross-WP work was a review of how forest degradation has been and should be addressed under REDD+ (see first I-REDD+ policy brief). This work has been followed up by a stock-taking of the results produced in I-REDD+ presented in Deliverable 7.5 and the fourth policy brief entitled ‘Lessons for REDD+ from complex mosaic landscapes’, presented at COP20 in Lima, Peru in December 2014. This policy brief was also based on the outcomes of the International Conference ‘Carbon-Land-Property’ that was organized by I-REDD+ in Copenhagen in July 2014 and had 120 participants. Two additional cross-WP policy briefs on community based monitoring (presented at COP18, Doha, 2012) and on advances in carbon stock measurement in complex landscapes (presented at COP19, Warsaw, 2013) have also been published earlier.
WP2 focuses on GHG emissions and due to the comprehensive field work and data analysis needed, the main focus has been on the Lao and Indonesian sites. WP2 reviewed allometrics for both above and belowground biomass, and has developed a revised allometric for shifting cultivation regrowth which significantly changes carbon stock estimates, compared to conventional models. While above-ground biomass was generally overestimated by existing allometrics, belowground biomass was more than 50% larger according to the developed allometric. Uncertainty and diversity of below-ground carbon estimates was quantified, and a model describing carbon stocks in fallow systems as function of cultivation intensity was developed. Soil carbon was shown to be less sensitive to land use change than proposed by existing models. Evaluation of permanganate oxidisable C as a labile carbon pool that is more sensitive to land use changes proved partly successful as a low-technology soil carbon proxy, while it does not serve as an early indicator of soil carbon dynamics.
WP3 worked on developing improved remote sensing based methods for monitoring land use change and C-stocks, and the aim was specifically to address monitoring problems related to forest degradation in mosaic landscapes and to develop a scalable approach suitable for national deforestation monitoring. (1) Dense Landsat time series between 2000 and 2012 were used to map forest clearings and fallow age. These maps were than combined with a carbon bookkeeping model to assess the historic carbon emissions in the Huaphan province, Laos. The results of this carbon assessment showed a decrease in regional carbon storage over the ten-year period, but also high variability in carbon emissions across space and time. Our study highlights the need for frequent EO data in mosaic landscapes, as few, periodic observations would be unreliable to construct reference emission levels. (2) We tested the potential of hyperspectral remote sensing data from the Hyperion sensor to characterize forest fallow vegetation age. While short (less than 4 years) and longer fallow rotations (5-13 years) were distinguishable with acceptable accuracy, a finer differentiation of fallow age was not possible due to fine-scale heterogeneity of landscape mosaics, and due to limitations of current hyperspectral sensor data. The upcoming EnMAP mission will provide satellite-based hyperspectral remote sensing data at a much higher quality than is currently available, which will very likely improve landscape scale analyses. Finally, (3) we demonstrate a method to integrate coarse-resolution remote sensing data from MODIS and fine-scale remote sensing data for national scale forest monitoring. MODIS captured deforestation well across different forest types for pixels that were more than 75% deforested. Smaller disturbances were more difficult to detect accurately with MODIS. Overall, applying a sample-based approach by integrating wall-to-wall MODIS and Landsat samples improved deforestation area estimates and provided statistically sound estimates of uncertainty.
In WP4, community based monitoring is compared to scientist executed monitoring in order to understand the feasibility of bottom up approaches to forest biomass monitoring. The main results obtained is that the ability of local communities to monitor the AGB in their forest increases with repetition of monitoring activities to an extent where, for eight out of nine study sites in China, Laos, Vietnam and Indonesia, the difference between the monitoring done by professional foresters and the community monitors was statistically insignificant. Furthermore, we found that over two separate rounds of monitoring, community monitoring became cheaper and more cost effective than professional monitoring. In our experience much of this success was based on the focus on simple methods that community monitors were able to apply correctly and consistently with a very limited amount of training and supervision.
In WP5 the potential costs and benefits of REDD+ for local livelihoods and food security are assessed through opportunity costs analysis and participatory simulation. WP5 extends the analysis of opportunity costs to the landscape level so as to account for ecosystem goods and services associated with land use patterns and their implications in the broader context of livelihood systems. Opportunity costs analysis then feeds participatory land-use simulations where the possible impacts of hypothetical REDD+ schemes on carbon sequestration, livelihoods and food security are explored with local communities. A high variability in REDD+ feasibility was observed between study sites. In Laos, local communities showed a significant interest in REDD+ motivated by limited market/cash income opportunities, although such opportunities are now rapidly expanding and causing conversion of shifting cultivation to more permanent cultivation of maize. In China there was little interest due to the high opportunity costs of rubber plantations. In Vietnam, the potential for REDD+ implementation would be limited by the poor conditions of forests and the time required for reforestation and forest regeneration. In Indonesia, REDD+ may arrive too late to compete with the recent wave of rubber, oil palm and mining operations. As REDD+ monitoring is likely to include safeguards, WP5 also analyzed a series of case studies to derive a range of indicators for participatory livelihood monitoring in areas with REDD+ in Southeast Asia.
WP6 analyzes how REDD+ payments may work under different payment scenarios and under different governance and institutional structures in the four case countries. We completed four key steps: 1) analysis of existing BDMs (Benefit Distribution Mechanisms) in the four case-study countries; 2) global and local comparative studies of potential BDMs; and 3) recommendations for REDD+. 4) development of policy briefs for each country. In the first step, ten existing BDMs were analysed in the four target countries, six of which are top-down state types of governance. In two cases government and International NGOs share authoritative rights and in the last two government and local communities share control rights. The top-down approaches require most financial resources and are perceived as the least just. In all cases, there was little information available on their performance in terms of environmental improvements. In the second step, the perceptions of different BDMs were also assessed at village level. Villagers generally prefer local direct findings as this is the only way they expect to be given control of access and exclusion rights. However, there was a high diversity in preferences and even acceptance of increased inequality as it is recognized that households will be engaged differently in REDD+. Overall, no single solution is relevant for all contexts. At the global level, a comparative study of BDMs in 13 countries revealed that in most countries with top-down state governance, environmental services are not paid for based on performance and thus it is unclear whether market based payments will work. Moreover, in most countries, local communities are given use rights, but not control rights. Overall, experiences with existing BDMs make it doubtful that governance of REDD+ will lead to more just management of forests unless decentralized and participatory approaches to BDMs that involve local communities actively are implemented. Based on those findings, the general policy recommendation was developed suggesting that contextualized and decentralized BDMs would benefit from meaningful local participation. Specific recommendations were drawn for the improvement of REDD+ effectiveness and justice in four areas: governance (i.e. control and authoritative rights); the fund mechanism (i.e. transaction rights); forest tenure (i.e. use rights) and capacity-building needs. These results were presented in four policy briefs in English as well as national languages in order to reach a broader audience and wider dissemination.
As a synthesizing work package, WP7 works towards guiding the improvement of measurement, reporting and verification (MRV). The key message of WP7 findings suggests that the uncertainty inherent in both retrospective and prospective forest reference levels (FRLs) cannot be completely resolved. As a result, the additionality of investments into safeguarding forest carbon in REDD+ actions is difficult to ensure. As evident in all study sites and as shown empirically in the case study sites, land-use transitions are often surprising and unforeseeable. We therefore question the use of FRLs based on historic data, particularly in the complex mosaic landscapes of Southeast Asia that frequently experienced rapid, nonlinear change. The uncertain future poses a critical challenge for the implementation of REDD+ and suggests that REDD+ MRV systems should not rely on the prediction of future carbon dynamics for prescribing compensation payments in tons of carbon equivalents. Instead, different approaches to safeguard forest carbon and associated co-benefits are needed, such as more direct interventions to safeguard forest carbon and co‐benefits. In addition, research in this work package revealed that the underlying drivers for forest carbon losses originate from global drivers that are outside the influence of national policies. As a result, REDD+ schemes as proposed by the UNFCCC are likely not effective because the salient drivers cannot be deflected.
Overall, the main results of I-REDD+ work show that belowground biomass has been underestimated in shifting cultivation landscapes and the new allometrics developed are needed for improved carbon accounting during land use changes in such areas. Monitoring of carbon stock changes in these dynamic landscapes is possible and cost-effective with community involvement and this could also reinforce the provision of control rights to local communities as the current governance schemes related to benefit distribution mechanisms are mainly top-down and not ceding anything but use right to the local level. Satellite based monitoring will be essential for REDD+ and while our results show limitations for the use of SAR, MODIS combined with high-resolution data is promising at the national level even if some fine-scale information in mosaic landscapes are not captured by MODIS. For the regional and sub-regional level, new approaches with dense Landsat image time series capture detailed forest changes in dynamic landscapes. Finally, we have demonstrated both with local case studies and more theoretical approaches that, due to the extremely high opportunity costs of other land uses and the difficulty of predicting regime shifts in land use, it will be very challenging to implement effective REDD+ in terms of actually reducing GHG emissions.
Potential Impact:
Impacts.
The I-REDD+ research project originally responded to a call text that asked for research to “Improve and facilitate harmonisation of monitoring, accounting and verification aspects related to REDD/LULUCF in view of a post-2012 agreement. Identify and assess the effectiveness of relevant mitigation policies, at international level and contribute to the implementation of a post-2012 international agreement on climate change”. As it is well known, neither a post-2012 international agreement on climate change nor any sub-agreement on REDD/LULUCF have been reached in the UNFCCC negotiations. Nonetheless, I-REDD+ has worked intensively to influence the negotiations of these agreements as well as their preparations for their implementation at local level in the I-REDD+ target countries of Indonesia, Laos, Vietnam and China.
I-REDD+ has considerably advanced the state of the art in science for the understanding of opportunities and challenges for REDD+ implementation. Some of these have already been published and include the demonstration of how local communities can cost-effectively and with high accuracy measure carbon stocks in forests (published in Ecology and Society and Forests); how benefit distribution mechanisms need to include more decentralization and local participation to be successful and just (published in Land Use Policy and Earthscan book); and that regime shifts in land systems represent a serious obstacle to obtaining additionality and permanence in REDD+ (published in Global Environmental Change and Environmental Management). In addition, several important results are in preparation for publication, including a discovery that belowground carbon stocks are underestimated in forest fallows that have been under shifting cultivation; development of new remote sensing based methods for carbon accounting in landscapes with shifting cultivation and degraded forests; and how the opportunity costs of land uses such as rubber, oil palm and maize are so high that REDD+ is unlikely to be feasible in many areas.
Impacts on policy processes and society in general are more difficult to measure at this early stage but through dialogue with both international REDD+ negotiators and staff responsible for REDD+ at national and local level in the four countries in Southeast Asia, it is clear that I-REDD+ has provided valuable inputs. For example, the results that demonstrate the weaknesses in how forest reference levels are translated into business-as-usual scenarios have been recognized as an important stumbling block for effective REDD+, and negotiators are calling for this issue to be addressed and not just ignored as a technical issue that can be resolved. It will be detrimental to an agreed REDD+ mechanism if ten years down the line it is realized that the additional emission reductions achieved were much lower than what was paid for – or the opposite case where REDD+ projects were never established because historical deforestation was too low, but subsequent regime shifts caused rapid decline in forests deemed ineligible for REDD+.
The results related to how communities can cost-effectively and accurately measure carbon stocks in their forests received considerable media attention, including broadcasts by BBC News, Mongabay and numerous other media. This, along with results that illustrate that benefit distribution mechanisms do not work without local participation, brought considerable attention to this issue and helped strengthen the agenda of the proponents who see the UNFCCC safeguards as central for a future REDD+ agreement. Community involvement in monitoring can be an important way of engaging stakeholders in the REDD+ implementation and thereby also make it more likely to succeed. Few REDD+ eligible governments, however, see community monitoring as being feasible in national monitoring systems, but even though REDD+ will be a national mechanism, it will always have sub-national implications that will involve forest users to some extent. Hence, I-REDD+ has made a considerable effort strengthen the positions at international, national and local level that see community involvement in REDD+ as essential.
The results related to how belowground carbon stocks in forest fallows are underestimated are yet to make a significant impact as they are under publication, but as these landscapes cover vast areas of the tropics, they are likely to have significant impact on distribution of emissions between different land use types. This will affect policies on how REDD+ deals with these landscapes and they may be considerably more valuable for climate change mitigation than previously thought. In addition, the remote sensing techniques developed specifically for monitoring these landscapes will be able to integrate these new carbon stock results to adjust larger scale carbon accounting estimates. Thus, the combination of better carbon stock assessment and more detailed remote sensing based forest monitoring will be highly useful for national forest and carbon monitoring systems.
At the national level, I-REDD+ has through a range of efforts led by the project partners in Indonesia, Laos, Vietnam and China brought these concerns to the REDD+ agenda, such as in REDD+ offices or task forces at national and local level. Especially at local level, and particularly in Laos, I-REDD+ has contributed to capacity building of local staff that have been made aware of the complex nature of REDD+ through the research activities. This has also taken place at community level, especially through the participatory land use planning (PLUP) exercises carried out in each of the eight villages targeted for I-REDD+ research. This made communities highly aware of what REDD+ may or may not do and provided them with a better background for decision-making if they become involved in actual REDD+ activities.
Overall, the I-REDD+ project has documented a number of weaknesses that need to be accounted for in future REDD+ projects and programmes. These findings may not be a contribution to making REDD+ implementation easier or reaching an international agreement more likely, but they help to avoid fundamental mistakes that may jeopardize successes in emission mitigation from land-use change. International negotiations may reach agreement on technical and political issues, but these will not be useful if fundamental elements of the REDD+ system are ignored.
Dissemination activities
The I-REDD+ project produced at an early stage a dissemination plan that outlined all dissemination activities apart from scientific publication that is presented under results. These activities targeted international, national and local levels of policy as well as the broader public internationally and in the partner countries in Southeast Asia. The activities have been as follows:
I) Project website
The I-REDD+ project website www.i-redd.eu has been continuously updated and expanded and the public site contains all necessary information about the project activities, field sites, project partners and participants as well as project events. Moreover, all publications of I-REDD+ are presented on the public site with direct links to the electronic versions of the papers where available. The internal part of the site is being consistently used for uploading project documents such deliverables, policy briefs, and other publications, including draft papers. The website will be kept online and continuously updated for at least 1-2 years as new publications of I-REDD+ work emerge.
A separate website was developed for the final conference entitled Carbon-Land-Property (http://carbonlandproperty.dk/ see more information below) to convey all relevant information related to the conference participants and the public.
Tracking of website visits was not done, but there has been considerable feed-back stating that both websites have been good resources for finding material about the projects, its activities and about REDD+ in general.
II) Policy briefs
Four general policy briefs have been produced by I-REDD+, all of which were finalized prior to and distributed at the UNFCCC Conference of the Parties in 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014. The policy briefs are entitled:
1. I-REDD+ Policy Brief no. 1 (2011). The forgotten D: challenges of addressing forest degradation in REDD+.
2. I-REDD+ Policy Brief no. 2 (2012). Understanding, measuring and governing changes in forest carbon stocks in complex landscapes.
3. I-REDD+ Policy Brief no. 3 (2013). Opportunities for REDD+ in degraded forests and complex landscapes.
4. I-REDD+ Policy Brief no. 4. (2014). Lessons for REDD+ from complex mosaic landscapes.
The briefs were moreover sent directly to the European Union REDD+ negotiators and distributed to wide range of other international and national events where REDD+ issues were discussed. The fourth policy brief was moreover translated into Lao and distributed to a wide range of stakeholders in Laos.
In addition, a number of other policy briefs were produced for specific activities in I-REDD+. The work on benefit distribution mechanisms was presented in four country specific policy briefs that were all translated into national languages. These briefs have been widely distributed in the four target countries and were presented at national consultations on REDD+ and benefit sharing. The governance group has moreover produced two policy briefs entitled ‘REDD+: Justice effects of technical design’ and ‘REDD+ Safeguards for Vietnam: Key Issues and the Way Forward’.
The work on community based forest monitoring also resulted in a policy brief entitled ‘Policy brief on cost-effective methods for monitoring forest biomass and land-use change’ that was distributed as part of policy brief series at University of Copenhagen. Finally, a brief entitled ‘Local Mitigation Actions Supporting the Low Emission Development Plan in Kutai Barat District, Indonesia’ was produced in both English and Indonesian for local dissemination (Johana et al. 2013).
III) I-REDD+ conferences
Two international conferences were organized by I-REDD+. The ‘Conference on science based measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) systems for REDD+ in Southeast Asia’ was aimed at regional policy-makers in Southeast Asia and held on 9th November 2012 in Hanoi, Vietnam. The focus of the conference was on how science can contribute to developing Measurement, verification and reporting (MRV) systems. The conference had 60 participants.
The main I-REDD+ event was the international conference ‘Carbon-Land-Property’ which was held at University of Copenhagen on 1-4th July 2014. Keynote speakers included leading researchers on REDD+: Prof. Arun Agrawal, University of Michigan, USA; Prof. Arild Angelsen, University of Life Sciences, Norway; Dr. Christine Padoch, Director of Livelihoods Programme, Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR); Dr. Esteve Corbera, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain; Dr. Frédéric Achard, Joint Research Centre; Dr. Sandra Brown, Winrock Foundation, USA; Prof. Nancy Peluso, University of California Berkeley. Moreover, the conference was opened by Head of Department and president of the IUFRO Niels Elers Koch and Dr. Anastasios Kentarchos, representing the European Commission (DG Research). While the conference was mainly a scientific event, presentations by REDD+ negotiators from the European Commission (Dr. Michael Bucki) and the Danish Government (Dr. Peter Iversen) ensured the link to important policy arenas. A total of 120 participants from all over the World attended the conference. See more on http://carbonlandproperty.dk
IV) Side-events at UNFCCC COPs 2012-2014 and other conferences
I-REDD+ organized two side-events at EU Pavilion of the UNFCCC COPs. At COP18 in Doha, November 2012, a side-event entitled ‘Is the window of opportunity for REDD+ closing?’ was organized jointly with the REDD-ALERT project and I-REDD+ had two presentations. At COP19 in Warsaw, I-REDD+ organized a full side-event entitled ‘Opportunities for REDD+ in degraded and complex landscapes’ with four presentations. At COP20 in Lima in December 2014, the final outcomes of I-REDD+ was presented at a side-event in EU Pavilion entitled ‘LULUCF & REDD+: Forest Potential for Climate Change Mitigation in the Post-Kyoto Framework’. This event was organized by the Swedish University of Agriculture and I-REDD+ was invited to present. All events had a good audience of 40-60 participants, including negotiators, who engaged in discussions of the work presented. The policy briefs mentioned above were all presented and distributed at the COPs.
In addition to the I-REDD+ conferences and COPs, I-REDD+ work has been presented at wide range of international, national and local events aimed at scientific, policy and broader audiences. In total, the project has been presented with more than 130 different types of dissemination efforts.
V) Dissemination in Southeast Asian countries
Dissemination of I-REDD+ results in the countries selected for case studies in Southeast Asia has been another high priority of I-REDD+, both to ensure that decisions on REDD+ are taken on an informed basis and to contribute to capacity building on REDD+. As mentioned above, four policy briefs on the governance work were translated into national languages and several other activities were carried out in each country:
In China, an I-REDD+ Dissemination Workshop was organized by Kunming Institute of Botany in Jinghong, Yunnan, in September 2014 and had 53 participants from government, research, business, and NGOs. The main aim was to present I-REDD+ results and to discuss how payment for environmental services can be improved in the Chinese context.
In Indonesia, an event was organized by WWF-Indonesia and ICRAF in Balikpapan, East Kalimantan, entitled ‘First district-scale green economy plan in Indonesia launched in Kutai Barat’. I-REDD+ results were presented, including the brief mentioned above on local mitigation actions (Johana et al. 2013), and the event was also accompanied by a range of other policy briefs addressing different REDD+ relevant issues:
- Develop REDD+ Readiness Through Participatory Land Use Mapping and Planning in Indonesia: Case of Kutai Barat (in Indonesian)
- Creating Community Forest in Indonesia: Case of Kutai Barat, East Kalimantan
- Participatory Land Use Planning, Case of Batu Majang Village, East Kalimantan, Indonesia (in Indonesian)
- Community Conservation Area in Kutai Barat, East Kalimantan, Indonesia (in Indonesian)
In Laos, the fourth general I-REDD+ policy briefs was translated into Lao and disseminated in various policy arenas in the country that deal with REDD+. In addition, I-REDD+ results were presented to the Research Forum for Development held by National University of Laos and the National Agricultural and Forestry Research Institute on 17-18 December 2014. These activities were organized by National University of Laos. As a post-project activity, a national dissemination workshop is planned on 10th March in Huaphan Province where most I-REDD+ work have taken place.
In Vietnam, the I-REDD+ paper on effective, efficient and equitable REDD+ was translated to Vietnamese and distributed at various REDD+ policy events. Moreover, a book based on I-REDD+ results and destined for teaching at university level on REDD+ has been written. The book is currently in the process of being published. These activities were organized by Center for Agricultural Research and Ecological Studies, Vietnam National University of Agriculture.
Collaboration with other projects and institutions
Agreements were made with two REDD+ implementing organizations, the German funded CliPAD project in Laos and the international NGO SNV that works regionally. The purpose of the agreements was for I-REDD+ to follow activities regarding implementation of REDD+ on the ground and for the organizations to get access to data from I-REDD+. Unfortunately, the CliPAD Project has so far been unable to implement their REDD+ activities in Laos and SNV implementation in Vietnam did not start before I-REDD+ field research was completed. Therefore, it was not possible to assess the impacts of any actual REDD+ implementation before the project ended. This has not been crucial for obtaining results as the I-REDD+ research was designed for this fairly likely risk-scenario to occur.
Contact with the other EU FP7 funded project on REDD+, REDD-ALERT, was established in 2011 and I-REDD+ ideas and plans were presented at the third annual REDD-ALERT project meeting in Dalat, Vietnam, September 2011. Contact with the REDD-ALERT coordinator has been maintained since this meeting, including the joint side-event at COP18 in Doha.
Existing agreements are still in force and I-REDD+ works in close collaboration with a range of new research projects. These include e.g. ‘Property and Citizenship in Developing Societies’ that co-funded the July 2014 conference with funds from the Danish Research Council for Independent Research, the ‘Ecosystem Services and Well-Being’ project funded by the ESPA mechanism of the United Kingdom Natural Environment Research Council, and the Global Land Project under FutureEarth, which has endorsed I-REDD+ as one of its core activities.
List of Websites:
http://www.i-redd.eu
