tropical deforestation - local solutions for global problems
TRANSCRIPT
Tropical deforestation
Local solutions for global problems
Luis Santamaria
The sustainability and conservation of Malaysian forests Kuala Lumpur 14/09/2011
Tropical areas represent the largest remaining tracts of continuous pristine forested habitats
(together with the boreal region).
The sustainability and conservation of Malaysian forests Kuala Lumpur 14/09/2011
Tropical deforestation leads to reductions in biodiversity, disturbed ecosystems services (e.g. water
regulation, soil conservation) and the destruction of livelihoods for many of the world’s poorest.
Kindermann et al. (2008) PNAS
The sustainability and conservation of Malaysian forests Kuala Lumpur 14/09/2011
The humid tropics is where the modern extinction crisis will have the greatest effect
They host 60% of the world’s terrestrial biodiversity hotspots, and contain the highest number of
threatened species overall.
Coupled with accelerated rates of global change, the higher extinction proneness and greater
concentrations of tropical biodiversity predict increasingly severe species losses.
Brook et al. (2011)
The sustainability and conservation of Malaysian forests Kuala Lumpur 14/09/2011
Global deforestation produces between 12 to 20% of global greenhouse gases, about equal to the emissions from the entire global transport sector.
Amazonia generates 27% of this.Kindermann et al. (2008)
The sustainability and conservation of Malaysian forests Kuala Lumpur 14/09/2011
martes, 13 de septiembre de 20119:24
SC America host as much tropical forest as Africa and SE Asia together. Under current deforestation rates, SE Asia will have virtually no forest by the
end of the century.
Cramer et al. (2004)
The sustainability and conservation of Malaysian forests Kuala Lumpur 14/09/2011
SE Asia show the world’s highest deforestation rate:
2 to 8 times higher than Africa or America.
martes, 13 de septiembre de 20119:24
INPE / Miettinen etal. (2011)
Effect of 1997-8 fires
The sustainability and conservation of Malaysian forests Kuala Lumpur 14/09/2011
Despite having much less forest, SE Asia shows C emission rates
comparable to or higher than those of C-S America
Cramer et al. (2004)
The sustainability and conservation of Malaysian forests Kuala Lumpur 14/09/2011
The sustainability and conservation of Malaysian forests Kuala Lumpur 14/09/2011
Scenarios for the combined effect of land-use change and climate change by 2100
Asner et al. (2010)
Deforestation
Climate change
Cattle ranches 65-70%
Agriculture 25-35%
Logging, legal and illegal 2-3%
Other 1-2%
The sustainability and conservation of Malaysian forests Kuala Lumpur 14/09/2011
Main drivers of deforestation
Amazonia SE Asia
Oil palm plantations
Rubber plantations
Logging, legal and illegal
Other
The sustainability and conservation of Malaysian forests Kuala Lumpur 14/09/2011
The Amazonian case
In the Amazonia, deforestation increased steeply from 1990 to 2004, but it has decreased since then.
Is this a temporary decrease, or does it reflect a long-term change in deforestation dynamics?
1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 20104
6
8
Def
ores
tatio
n ra
te (1
000
km
2)
Changes to Brazil's Forest Code
The sustainability and conservation of Malaysian forests Kuala Lumpur 14/09/2011
1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 20104
6
8
1.500
2.000
2.500
3.000
3.500
4.000
4.500
5.000
Def
ores
tatio
n ra
te (1
000
km
2)
Braz
il's p
er c
apita
GD
P
The sustainability and conservation of Malaysian forests Kuala Lumpur 14/09/2011
ENSO warm (El Niño) ENSO cold (La Niña)
The sustainability and conservation of Malaysian forests Kuala Lumpur 14/09/2011
1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 20104
6
8
1.500
2.000
2.500
3.000
3.500
4.000
4.500
5.000
Def
ores
tatio
n ra
te (1
000
km
2)
Braz
il's p
er c
apita
GD
P
The sustainability and conservation of Malaysian forests Kuala Lumpur 14/09/2011
After 2004, a vertiginous drop in clearing seemed to be occurring and the zero-clearingn target (“desmatemento zero”) became a credible idea in Brazil’s policy circles.
How did this transformation come about and is it durable?
1.The “Politics of Agreement”: convergence of all the environmentalisms.
2.Controlling deforestation in Amazonia: the politics of multiple environmentalisms.
3.Governments, Governance and Governmentality
The sustainability and conservation of Malaysian forests Kuala Lumpur 14/09/2011
Hecht (2011)
1. The Politics of Agreement
- Empirical baseline : science based information on the magnitude and location of clearing, produced in timely usable ways.
- Emergence of climate change as a national political concern.
- The “rules of the game” were agreed to:
The sustainability and conservation of Malaysian forests Kuala Lumpur 14/09/2011
• All sectors agreed on the use of regulations (Forest Code), state powers (national environmental agency, state agencies) and local social institutions to enforce deforestation laws.
• Local social institutions and decentralized strategies (at municipal and state levels) were supported for controlling clearing.
• Market mechanisms were mobilized to enhance alternatives to clearing (ranging from intensification of agriculture/agroforestry, to payment for environmental services).
Hecht (2011)
2. The Politics of Multiple Environmentalisms
Varying approaches for controlling deforestation:
- Conservation set asides and the fragmented forest.
- Inhabited forest: extractive reserves (traditional peoples) and indigenous reserves.
- The Social Forest: Reimagining the Matrix.
- The Globalized Arc of Fire: the soy frontier.
The sustainability and conservation of Malaysian forests Kuala Lumpur 14/09/2011
Hecht (2011)
3. Governments, Governance and Governmentality
- The deforestation Panopticon. Command-and-control form of compliance to legal norms, facilitated by surveillance technology.
- Governmentality, Environmentality and the Creation of Environmental Citizens.
- Global governance.International pressure on the beef and ranch frontiers.The golbalization of Amazon taste.
The sustainability and conservation of Malaysian forests Kuala Lumpur 14/09/2011
Hecht (2011)
SE Asia is a hot spot for biodiversity but is undergoing widespread change.
Its global markets are growing, as is large-scale agricultural business.
Large extensions of primary forest are being turned into oil-palm and rubber-tree plantations.
SE Asia
The sustainability and conservation of Malaysian forests Kuala Lumpur 14/09/2011
Primary forests were the source of nearly 60% of new plantations established in Southeast Asia between 1980 and 2000.
Gibbs et al. (2010)In 1990–2005, more than half of oil-palm development in Malaysia and Indonesia had resulted in deforestation.
Koh & Wilcove (2008)
The sustainability and conservation of Malaysian forests Kuala Lumpur 14/09/2011
Parallels with Amazonia:
1. The role of agricultural commodities
E.g. in 1997-1998, fires burned some 9.7 million hectares of forest and non-forest land, caused estimated economic damage of more than 9 billion dollars and released 0.8-2.5 gigatons of carbon into the atmosphere.
The sustainability and conservation of Malaysian forests Kuala Lumpur 14/09/2011
The tremendous amounts of carbon stored in the region’s forests and peatlands are being swept to the atmosphere. To these, we must add the loss of C-uptake capacity in these ecosystems - and the catastrophic spread of fires during dry years.
2. C emissions and fire dynamics
There is a clear link between drought, deforestation and carbon emissions.
In 2006, the climate was 3 times drier in the region than it was in 2000, and the carbon emissions were 30 times greater – exceeding emissions from fossil fuel burning.
The sustainability and conservation of Malaysian forests Kuala Lumpur 14/09/2011
3. A strong influence of El Niño…
In a dry climate, fires are easier to set. Land managers respond to the drought by using fire to clear more land. In dry years, they burn deeper into the forest, releasing more carbon dioxide.
Dipterocarp reproduction is tied to the arrival of El Niño: most species synchronize their flowering to the onset of dry weather.
By reducing the local density and biomass of mature trees below critical thresholds that limit masting, logging may disrupt this reproductive cycle.
Forest triggered by dry conditions may restrict further seed recruitment, and drought stress on seedlings, saplings and adults.
The sustainability and conservation of Malaysian forests Kuala Lumpur 14/09/2011
Curran et al. (1999)
… that extends to forest dynamics…
Constrains to dipterocarp reproduction linked to threshold size for masting put into question current selective-logging practices, based on a minimum-size threshold for all species (45-cm DBH).
Comparable policies, used e.g. for fisheries and sport-hunting regulation, are currently being revised worldwide owing the introduction of undesired demographic and evolutionary effects (e.g. Darimont et al.
2009, Santamaría & Méndez 2011).
The sustainability and conservation of Malaysian forests Kuala Lumpur 14/09/2011
… suggesting that changes in logging practices may be advisable
4. Peat swamp ecosystems, which store large amounts of carbon in the soil…
The sustainability and conservation of Malaysian forests Kuala Lumpur 14/09/2011
In Peninsular Malaysia, Borneo and Sumatra, the extent of cleared peatlands (2.3 million ha) more than doubles the land area under oil-palm cultivation (≈880,000 ha).
The unplanted clearings that remain are under increasing threat of conversion, particularly if cleared peatlands were to be considered “degraded lands” by land-use policymakers.
Koh et al. 2011
The sustainability and conservation of Malaysian forests Kuala Lumpur 14/09/2011
…have been extensively cleared…
Biodiversity outcomes of land-use transition scenarios for cleared peatlands
Koh et al. 2011
The sustainability and conservation of Malaysian forests Kuala Lumpur 14/09/2011
…and will be further degraded if turned into oil-palm plantations.
Successional influx of different taxa into secondary forests of different ages (Chazdon,
2009).
The role of secondary forest
The sustainability and conservation of Malaysian forests Kuala Lumpur 14/09/2011
Secondary forests show a reasonable recovery of biodiversity within moderate time frames (years to decades).
Hence, they may represent good opportunities for forest-ecosystem recovery, provided that:
1. Older, more species-rich secondary forests near protected areas are given priority
2. Secondary forest re expanded nearby old-growth forests and riparian zones, and used to established biological corridors.
3. Areas where regeneration is slow or inhibited become priorities for assisted regeneration, reforestation, agroforestry, or sustainable agriculture.
4. Monitoring programs are developed and framed into adaptive management practices.
The sustainability and conservation of Malaysian forests Kuala Lumpur 14/09/2011
Summary of comparison
The sustainability and conservation of Malaysian forests Kuala Lumpur 14/09/2011
Amazonia SE AsiaEmpirical baseline Incipient, largely academic
Climate change as national concern Weak
Rules of the game agreed to Weak
Set asides Most ParksSustainable reserves Present (?)
Sustanaible management of fragment-matrix mosaic
Preliminary experiences.
Intensification-for-conservation Under-developed
State PanopticonAbsent. Difficult to implement
(ASEAN?)
Governmentality and Environmentality Absent (?)
Global governance Moderate
The sustainability and conservation of Malaysian forests Kuala Lumpur 14/09/2011
Questions? Comments?
Acknowledgements
The sustainability and conservation of Malaysian forests Kuala Lumpur 14/09/2011