Management of degraded forests

1. Management of Degraded
Forest: Eco-Restoration
Through REDD+ Strategies
Alex K George
2014-17-115
I M Sc. Forestry

3. REDD
Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation
(REDD) is an effort to create a financial value for the carbon stored in
forests, offering incentives ($30 billion per year) for developing
countries to reduce emissions from forested lands and invest in low-
carbon paths to sustainable development.
- UNFCCC

4. Origin of REDD/ REDD+

7. REDD+
a) Reducing emissions from deforestation
b) Reducing emissions from forest degradation
c) Conservation of forest - carbon stocks, biodiversity
d) Sustainable management of forest
e) Enhancement of forest carbon stocks – restoration and afforestation
-UNFCCC 2009

10. STRATEGY OF REDD+
Supports international cooperation and national action to
reduce deforestation,
prevent forest degradation,
promote sustainable livelihoods and reduce poverty for all forest-dependent
people
enhancing carbon stock
and thereby mitigating climate change.

11. Ecosystem Restoration
• Ecosystem Restoration is the “process of assisting the recovery of an
ecosystem that has been degraded, damaged or destroyed”.
- SER Primer, 2004
• Ecosystem Restoration - important component of conservation and
sustainable development programmes - the livelihoods of people depending
on the degraded ecosystems can be sustained along with biodiversity
conservation.
• Ecological restoration is an important tool to reverse global losses of forest
carbon stocks/ carbon mitigation strategies under the REDD+

12. Restoration projects can,
1. Protect existing carbon pools by avoiding conversion.
2. Accelerates the rate of carbon sequestration
A. Releasing remaining trees from competing
B. Enrichment planting of selected seedlings
3. Enhance biodiversity and ecosystem service provision
4. Providing important sources of food, fuel wood, and wild fodder and also
employment of local people – increased livelihood – reduced pressure on forest.

13. To restore
Stop the causes of degradation and allow forests to regenerate on their
own
Accelerate tree regeneration and growth through application of any of
a variety of silvicultural treatments.
Plant seeds or seedlings in natural or artificial gaps - enrichment
planting
Need appropriate incentives, policies, institutional arrangements, and
local participation

14. Restoring slightly degraded forest
• SDF are timber harvesting was restricted to the legally permitted
fraction of trees and only occurred in accordance with government-
specified minimum cutting cycles or at longer intervals
• Reductions in carbon stocks and high-value tree species
1. Absence of silvicultural plans
2. Trained fellers
3. Harvest plan

15. To restore…
Reductions in logging intensities
Avoidance of timber harvesting from steep slopes and other
environmentally sensitive areas,
Lengthening of cutting cycles,
Use of reduced-impact logging techniques and
Liberation treatments of future crop trees in the residual stand.
Application of such treatments to a selectively logged forest in
Amazonian Brazil doubled the annual rate of above-ground biomass
recovery from 0.16 to 0.33 Mg C ha-1 yr-1

16. Restoring moderately degraded forest
• MDF, more commercially high-value trees are harvested than
authorized, and excessively damaging logging practices are employed
• Intermediate size trees, reproductively mature, and some large trees
with defective stems,
• Carbon stocks are reduced by half of that in SFD
Restored by
Silvicultural treatments - enhance the growth of future crop trees
Preventing pre-mature re-entry logging
Continued use of proper logging practices

17. Restoring highly degraded forest
• HDF, trees smaller than the legal- size limit and reproductively mature
trees of low financial value were harvested in response to strong
demand for timber and fuel wood coupled with weak governance.
• Opened canopy - excessive and repeated tree harvesting
• Susceptible to further degradation by fire or grazing
• Decrease in carbon stock
Restoration of HDF
Intensive liberation treatments to stimulate the growth of trees with the
capacity to grow to large sizes.
Enrichment planting with native species.

18. Restoring critically degraded forest
• CDF corresponds to areas that barely qualify as forest and that are at
the ecological threshold from which unassisted recovery is unlikely.
• over-harvesting of timber and fuel wood collection
• Often burned, overgrazed
• Dominated by lianas, shrubs, giant herbs or other non- arboreal species
• Risk of further degradation and transformation to non-forest land is
very high
• Simultaneously will lead to heavy loss of carbon stock

19. To restore….
Stopping the causes of degradation and allowing natural recovery processes to
proceed
Replanting
Assisted natural regeneration
Fire management
Grazing restrictions
Suppressing the growth of invasive and fire-favouring species
Protecting naturally regenerated native tree species
Weeding
Fertilizing
Inter-planting of native or even exotic nitrogen fixing trees.

20. - Sasaki, 2011

21. Ecosystem Restoration Concessions: A New Strategy for
Conserving Elephant Habitat in Sumatra?
Arnold F. Sitompul, Mathew Linkie, Donny Gunaryadi, Elisabet Purastuti and Arif Budiman
• Heavy conservation measures – no growth population.
• Most elephants are living outside protected area where more human
interventions
• Re-management and restoration efforts on former production forest,
including biotic (flora and fauna) and abiotic (soil, hydrology,
nutrition cycles and other natural process) components in order to re-
establish a biological balance
• REDD+ able to provide sustainable financing.
• Increased carbon stock, enhanced biodiversity conservation and
improved livelihood of tribals.

22. Constraints
• Lack of fund to provide incentivise
• Standard protocol to implement REDD+ projects
• Issues on ‘carbon rights’ are not fully addressed
• Uncertainty to legally claiming carbon stocks in designated REDD+
areas.
• Leakage
• Additionality
• Permanence
• Measurement

23. REFERENCE
• http://www.un-redd.org/aboutredd/tabid/102614/default.aspx
• https://www.iucn.org/about/union/commissions/cem/cem_work/cem_r
estoration
• http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320712001590
• http://indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/files/RestorationREDDlo-res.pdf
• http://www.sisef.it/iforest/contents/?id=ifor0556-004
• http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1755-
263X.2010.00143.x/full
• http://www.wetlands.org/Portals/0/specialist%20groups/WRSG/Alexa
nder%20et%20al%202011.pdf

24. Thank you…