Forest carbon and local livelihoods: assessment of opportunities and policy recommendations

By Joyotee Smith, S. Scherr. 2002

161 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Projects implemented as part of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol will have the dual mandate of mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and contributing to sustainable development. Basic agreement on core elements was reached in 2001, including the decision to allow afforestation and reforestation projects. However, it is not yet clear what rules will address social concerns. Many types of projects could potentially contribute to local livelihoods and ecosystem restoration, as well as to carbon emission offsets, including those using natural forest regeneration, agroforests, improved forest fallows and agroforestry. Averted deforestation projects with multiple-use forestry, though not eligible in the first CDM period, could be reconsidered in the future. Such projects can be designed to rigorously meet CDM criteria for carbon impact, additionality, leakage and duration. If suitably targeted, they can be cost-effective for investors in terms of production costs. Some, however, may have higher transaction costs. Proactive efforts are needed to enable community-based CDM forestry projects and local land uses to compete effectively in carbon trading markets with projects managed by large-scale operators. The CDM should require mandatory social impact assessments, harmonise the CDM with social principles of other global conventions, promote measures to reduce transaction costs and explicitly include assisted natural regeneration and forest rehabilitation in the definition of afforestation and reforestation. Most developing countries will require policy action to establish the enabling conditions for forest carbon projects to contribute on a large scale to local livelihoods, integrate CDM projects within national development frameworks, attract investors, establish social criteria, secure local rights and promote support services for local people. Cost-effective project design requires attention to local participation, transparency, suitable compensation mechanisms, strategies to reduce transaction costs and risks and extend the scale of projects, and to enhance profitability of land uses.

Subfields: Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/de28ea3037c404a82ad0761c9aeba8cef97b4f8f

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In Global and Planetary Change

1. Sven Wunder
2. S. Engel
3. E. Corbera
4. S. Pagiola
5. K. Brown
6. M. Grieg-Gran
7. A. Vatn
8. I. Porras

Citations in the corpus

• Designing payments for environmental services in theory and practice: An overview of the issues (2008, background): “…agri-environmental schemes in Europe and the USA (Claassen et al., 2008-this issue; Dobbs and Pretty, 2008-this issue; Baylis et al., 2008-this issue), conservation concessions and easements (Niesten et al., 2004; Hardner and Rice, 2002), and forest-carbon plantations (Smith and Scherr, 2002).”
• How can market mechanisms for forest environmental services help the poor?: preliminary Lessons from Latin America (2005, background): “Concern has also been raised about potentially adverse impacts on rural livelihoods (Landell-Mills & Porras, 2002; Rosa, Kandel, & Dimas, 2003; Smith & Scherr, 2002).”
• Offsetting Benefits? Analyzing Access to Forest Carbon (2010, background): “While men prioritise fast-growing species, women prefer slow-growing trees which are more suitable for fuelwood, fodder, and fencing (Silva, 2002).”
• Climate change mitigation: a spatial analysis of global land suitability for Clean Development Mechanism afforestation and reforestation (2008, background): “…tenure rights, in systems where large numbers of tenant farmers may be displaced due to the lower labor requirements of forestry activities, or access to land by indigenous communities may be lost, the displacement of subsistence farming activities may be of high concern (Smith and Scherr, 2002).”
• Can carbon sequestration markets benefit low-income producers in semi-arid Africa? Potentials and challenges (2007, background): “This may contribute to reducing rural poverty by providing payments to low-income resource managers who adopt C sequestration technologies (Smith and Scherr, 2002), along the lines of payments for environmental services (Ferraro, 2001; Pagiola et al., 2004, 2005).”
• Payments for environmental services: some nuts and bolts (2005, background): “Examples are conservation concessions (Niesten, Ratay, and Rice 2004; Hardner and Rice 2002), easements, protected catchments, or forest-carbon plantations (Smith and Scherr 2002).”