Rainforest Conservation

Articles Tagged with: Rainforest Conservation

26 February, 2009

Additionality

Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) and carbon credits sound like a good idea but I’m not sure how much they benefit rainforest conservation.

Behind my suspicion lies a concept that I have been aware of for a while but only recently learned that it has a name – ‘additionality’.

It’s a new jargon term which hasn’t yet made it into the dictionary. In understanding what it means I was lucky to meet a chap called Mike Packer who patiently and concisely explained things to me.

Mike is the founder of a company called ArborCarb which specialises in ecosystem services certification so he should know about these things.

By Mike’s definition; additionality in the context of carbon finance is “when the carbon benefits of the project would not have happened if the project had not been implemented”.

In other words, carbon credits are relative to the ‘business as usual’ scenario.

Perverse Carbon Credits

If business as usual is conventional logging, then carbon emissions could be reduced, for example by switching to FSC certified logging. In the world of carbon finance, this reduction of potential emissions can be converted into a carbon credit for sale on international markets.

Although this helps make reduced impact logging more viable, it also creates the absurd possibility of carbon credits for logging primary forest.

On the other hand, additionality fails to provide economic incentive for rainforest conservation. If business as usual is conserving primary rainforests, then no carbon benefits can happen by sticking with rainforest conservation.

This defeats the purpose of PES if you consider that this purpose is to make trees worth more alive than dead. Intact ecosystems rather than degraded ones.

The only way that the current carbon market can value living trees is through Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD). Additionality is provided here because business as usual is deforestation or degradation.

This point is picked up in an article by Katoomba Group which says “Some argue that countries with low rates of deforestation should be rewarded to avoid creating a perverse incentive for these countries to increase deforestation in order to then qualify for REDD incentives. However, in order to maintain the environmental integrity of a REDD policy, credits can only be generated by additional reductions in emissions from deforestation, and these countries would have to be rewarded through other means.”

Biodiversity Conservation Certificates

Other ecosystem services may also be dependent on additionality. For example the Malua Biobank.

If this project did not go ahead the ‘business as usual’ scenario is leaving an area of degraded forest to recover naturally (over an unrealistic timeframe – economically) or converting it to plantation. By putting money into forest rehabilitation it is hoped that biodiversity can be restored more quickly – additionality.

The economic principles behind Malua Biobank are that investors will realise gains on the value of their certificates as biodiversity increases over time. This is still a voluntary market and sales are targeted mostly at companies that want to offset damage to ecosystems or simply want good environmental PR.

Of the criticisms of Malua Biobank:

One is that they are also planning to sell carbon certificates which may be seen by some as double selling the same resource.

Another is that it comes after a regime of environmentally disastrous logging practices. Third party investment in rehabilitation effectively excuses the logging companies from their obligation to pay the environmental cost of their operations.

The latter is also akin to double selling; you sell the logs, then you sell the biodiversity/carbon certificates for rehabilitation. Have your cake and eat it!

Scepticism about PES

My scepticism for PES, particulary carbon credits is that they don’t seem to provide enough incentive to avoid degrading the forest in the first place. Most are based on the assumption that deforestation or degradation has happened or is going to happen anyway.

I understand that this has been done in light of the reality of logging and plantations and the need to encourage these industries to be more sustainable. The result however could be losing sight of the fundamental principle of conserving forest for the benefit that it provides.

The baseline has been shifted so that PES are generated in relation to destruction rather than conservation.

The result of this baseline shift is a scenario in which a forest is being considered for REDD, which as we have seen relies on the additionality of avoiding deforestation in favour of conservation. Up steps FSC which says that in this case, “FSC Certification should be a prerequisite for a carbon finance initiative”.

Suddenly you have a forestry certificate when you should have an ‘avoided forestry’ or conservation certificate.

I think that the reason for this is that we lack the ability to verify the benefits of conservation.

The closest tool we have which can audit additionality, permanence and leakage in a forestry scenario is a system like FSC. It’s like trying to prune your roses with a chainsaw

Mike Packer is working on a complete ecosystem service certificate which offers hope of a more suitable tool which is not dependent on additionality. The pilot projects under discussion mostly involve rehabilitation of degraded or fragmented forest but I understand that once proven they could be applied to intact forests.

The ArborCarb certificate relies on science that identifies, evaluates and sells (to suitable customers) all of the services provided by an ecosystem. Significantly these certificates are not for sale as an offset product, which will help tackle the leakage problem. i.e. when land protected/rehabilitated in one area indirectly or directly causes degradation in another. The holistic approach also means that ecosystem services are less susceptible to double selling.

By removing the need to demonstrate additionality, the ArborCarb approach may be able to provide the ‘other means’ of rewarding countries with low rates of deforestation that I mentioned above.

Until we can achieve this I fear that it will be difficult to resist temptation; such as in Indonesia which this week reneged on a moratorium against planting oil palm on former peat swamp forest. Commentators see this as either a ploy to benefit industry ahead of elections or perhaps a ruse to increase potential earnings under future REDD projects. Or perhaps both?

The positive bit

Meanwhile most of the conservationists that I know support PES projects such as the Malua Biobank. They have chosen to be lenient on the history and controversy of Malua because the project represents an innovative experiment that may lead to a new model for engagement between industry and conservation.

‘At the very least even if the project only succeeds in putting a ring fence around 30,000ha of forest and prevents it’s conversion to plantation, then it will have been a success’ comments a friend of mine.

Sabah was at the vanguard of carbon finance 15years ago with the Infapro Project. Now it is pioneering biodiversity conservation certificates and could soon be leading the way in implementation of ecosystem services certificates which are not burdened with the tyranny of additionality.

More on ArborCarb at the Oxford Centre for Tropical Forests

BRL Chalet Photos2

The contractor is currently on site building the third and penultimate stage of the Borneo Rainforest Lodge renovation. Work on these 9 chalets is due to be completed by June 2009 and will bring the total inventory of renovated chalets to 24 rooms.

Most interesting is that two of these chalets will be linked by a roofed, landscaped deck to provide the option for a deluxe suite / twinned chalet; the master room of which will feature an outside tub in a detached pavilion with panoramic view of the Danum River.

The final phase will start on site later this year and will see the renovation of 4 more chalets plus the Main Lodge itself. More on this soon!

Above is a visualisation of the twin deluxe chalets and pavilion plus a photo of work on site.

Meanwhile, below are some images of the Deluxe Jungle-view rooms which were completed in 2008.

All photos by Calvin Ng unless stated.

Photo: Ian Hall

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18 December, 2008

Sun Bear Conservation Centre gets some Cash!

Our proposal for a Sun Bear Conservation Centre in Borneo has moved closer to reality thanks to an extravagant Fundraising Dinner held in Kota Kinabalu in November.

The event which was organised by our partner LEAP succeeded in raising over half a million ringgit. This money was then matched one-to-one by the State Government to give us a total which we hope will be enough to build Phase One.

The first priority is to enclose 1 hectare of the Sepilok Forest Reserve with electric fences. This will allow a controlled release of bears into their natural habitat.

All of the bears currently held at Sepilok have been confiscated by the Sabah Wildlife Department, usually from the pet trade or mini-zoos. These bears have become habituated to humans so if we just let them loose again in the forest they will either not have the skills to survive, or would make a nuisance of themselves and end up back where they started, or worse.

Phase One will provide the means to look after the welfare of up to 27 bears, for the rest of their lives if necessary. The capacity is limited by the number of night time dens and the number of forest enclosures.

A new bear house is to be built with denning for 20 bears plus food preparation, staff areas and a training pen. The training pen is used to teach the bears about electric fences! Meanwhile the existing bear house will be converted to be used for quarantine, treatment and birthing and then later extended to house a visitor centre

In design terms the biggest challenge is facilitating the movement of bears and making life easy and safe for both the bears and their keepers. Imagine the logistics of releasing 20 bears each morning into the correct forest enclosure and then getting them all back in again at night!

In the wild, sun bears live at very low densities and are generally solitary. In captivity they can become quite sociable but there is a risk that mixing the wrong bears could result in a brutal fight.

Making the building sustainable is of course high on our agenda. The bear house will use a lot of energy in operation and will embody plenty more in the construction materials.

We can mitigate the latter to a certain extent by using pre-cast concrete floors and lightweight block walls, but are constrained by the need to use concrete to raise the dens above flood level and to provide a surface that can stand the daily wash-down.

The access corridor between the dens will be floored with bio-composite boards which are made from recycled HDPE plastic mixed with a natural fiber – in this case rice husks.

To make the buildings comfortable for both bears and keepers we use large areas of natural ventilation plus a bituminous fibre roof sheeting which does not transfer heat as well as steel and also has the benefit of deadening the drumming of rain, which can be uncomfortable in a tropical deluge.

Luckily the site allows us to orient the building East-West which helps to minimise solar gain in the concrete structure.

As the centre will use large volumes of water for cleaning we will put in as many rainwater tanks as we can afford and link them together with electric pumps. These pumps together with the electric fences and a large fridge will be the biggest energy consumer in operation. Given the high cost of on-site power generation I don’t think we can do much about this at present

Greywater from washing down the cages will be treated in a septic tank and reed bed filter before being recycled. Solid waste will be scooped up daily from the dens and fed to a bio-digester from which we plan to capture methane to be used to cook the bear’s food. The staff toilet and any food scraps will also feed the digester.

Completion of Phase One is expected in late 2009. Meanwhile we will continue to raise funds for Phase Two. This will help the case for economic sustainability by offering a visitor centre, observation gallery and environmental education program. On completion of both phases the centre will complement the nearby Sepilok Orang-utan Centre and Rainforest Discovery Centre thus strengthening Sepilok’s reputation as a hub for environmental education and nature tourism.

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28 September, 2008

Logging Maliau Basin buffer zone

I have learned from several sources that the buffer zone to Maliau Basin is to be logged again. It’s unclear as to the extent of the logging but I’ve been told that it will affect the area around the access road, between the gate and the studies centre.

The Maliau Basin Conservation Area Management Plan allows for the buffer zone to be logged once more using reduced impact logging (RIL).

So far Yayasan Sabah (YS) have only formally implemented RIL on one small experimental plot near Danum Valley Conservation Area.

In the early days of logging in the Yayasan Sabah concession, much of the harvesting did have a reduced impact due to the highly selective nature of the extraction.

Latterly YS seem to have lost control over their contractors and we have witnessed virtual clear cutting. The Ulu Segama Malua area is a case in point. See my earlier post.

Clear cutting is more likely to occur in areas that have already been logged several times. This is because there are fewer large trees left to ‘select’. Without these large trees, a greater volume of smaller trees must be harvested in order for the forest reserve to be as profitable as it used to be.

Greed is overcoming sustainable forest management.

Despite these pressures, Yayasan Sabah has managed to keep most of it’s concession under natural forest cover to varying degrees. In other parts of the state much of the natural forest has now been replaced by plantation.

This conversion is starkly illustrated by the google earth image below which shows part of the southern boundary of the Yayasan Sabah Concession. Dark green natural forest above contrasts with ligther green plantation (mostly oil palm) below.

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Yayasan Sabah however is not immune to these commercial pressures. Most of their concession is still forest reserve because that is its legal land use zoning. The process of alienating state forest reserve into private agricultural land is a complex process, but not impossible

The google earth image below shows part of the YS concession, formerly designated forest reserve but now cleared for a 19,000ha softwood plantation.

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The buffer zone to Maliua Basin Conservation area is highly visible forest with high conservation value. This area supports one of the few remaining wild populations of the wild cattle known locally as tembadau.

Yayasan Sabah has been at the forefront of innovative forest management, starting in the 70’s when the logging was a low intensity, continued in the 90’s when they traded carbon offsets for forest regeneration and most recently, forest regeneration through the sale of biodiversity credits from the Malua Biobank.

The latter however came only after the environmental disaster at Ulu Segama Malua that I have mentioned.

Payments for ecosystem services (as carbon and biodiversity credits are known) is still in its infancy and heavily reliant on voluntary codes.

While governments, NGO’s and industry haggle over terms, the forest is still being cleared.

If forest is over exploited now it will become more expensive to regenerate in future, regardless of whether the investment comes from sustainable forestry or ecosystem services. In this case the only viable economic alternative may be conversion to plantation.

The google earth image below shows the distinctive caldera shaped Maliau Basin, picked out by the cloud clinging to its north eastern rim.

Maliau Basin is still connected by contiguous natural forest to other conservation areas such as Imbak and Danum, plus the remote jungles along the Kalimantan border known as The Heart of Borneo.

It is important to their viability as conservation areas that they remain connected.

View Larger Map

An Everyday Junglist surveying the Maliau Buffer zone that is to be logged.

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23 August, 2008

Conservation or Animal Welfare?

In Sabah I am working on the design of a Sun Bear Conservation Centre, but is it really a conservation centre? In the course of my research for this project, a prominent conservationist suggested to me that its function was likely to focus on animal welfare.

This got me wondering. Where is the boundary between wildlife conservation and animal welfare?

As man continues to encroach on natural habitats, more endangered species end up in our care.

The dilemma we face is the balance between providing a good home for displaced wildlife and avoiding displacement in the first place through effective conservation.

It is important to distinguish between conservation and welfare because this will help assess the value of a project. If we see a lot of animal welfare projects this suggests that resources should be targeted at in-situ conservation projects to redress the balance.

Next door to the site of the proposed Sun Bear Conservation Centre is the well known Sepilok Orang-utan Rehabilitation Centre (SORC). The stated goal of SORC is to rehabilitate orphaned orang-utans. We presume that this means returning them to the wild with the skills necessary to survive.

In practice most orang-utans which arrive at SORC never leave the 5500ha Sepilok Forest Reserve. Here they live in isolation from other wild orang-utan populations at higher densities than might naturally be expected. Anecdotes suggest that the rehabilitation programme has released as few as 5 individuals into the Tabin Wildlife Reserve.

Dr Reza Azmi of Wild Asia has lamented to me that in some cases, particularly in Kalimantan, these sanctuaries are “the end of the line for orang-utans”. As deforestation continues there remain fewer and fewer viable natural areas to release future ‘orphan’ animals.

“The scariest thing is that these sanctuaries are becoming more common” says Reza and not just for Orang-utans but for other charismatic mammals such as Tarsiers and Sun Bears.

The Sepilok Orang-utan Appeal argues emotively that we have a moral obligation to try to care for these environmental refugees. This is true, but are we helping to conserve the species by doing so?

Supporters of the ‘sanctuary’ or ‘conservation centre’ argue that they fulfill a vital environmental education role which will filter down to public pressure for conservation.

“That is the Zoo philosophy” says Dr. Glyn Davies, WWF Director of Programmes and former Director of Conservation for the Zoological Society of London.

Environmental education is important but it needs to be carefully balanced with conservation work. Conservation means stopping and/or reversing habitat loss, preventing extinction and conserving populations of wild animals.

“As soon as you anthropomorphise an animal, you are no longer involved in conservation, but animal welfare” summarised Glyn. By this he means to give the animal human characteristics – like a name.

Glyn was commenting to me on a comparison between the Borneo Sun Bear Conservation Centre and the Borneo Rhinoceros Conservation Centre. I was having difficulty to understand why he thought that the Rhinoceros Centre was a bona fide conservation project and the Sun Bear Centre was not.

He explained that the Rhino project was trying to save a critically endangered animal from imminent extinction through a captive breeding programme (see my earlier post). This process relies on minimum human/animal contact and certainly no tourists who might upset these shy animals.

Conversely, Sun Bears are curious and adaptable animals and once accustomed to humans there is always potential for human/animal conflict if they are released back into the wild.

It seems that in Sun Bears vs Rhinos the difference between conservation and welfare comes down to their temperaments.

This doesn’t sound fair but the implication is that if we cannot re-establish wild animals from a captive breeding population then we are not directly helping to conserve them.

What we can do is provide better welfare for those captive animals and this in itself is a worthy objective. Animal Welfare means avoiding unnecessary suffering in animals in our care and can be neatly encapsulated by the so called five freedoms: Freedom from hunger/thirst, discomfort, pain/injury/disease, to behave normally and freedom from fear/distress.

The Sun Bears at Sepilok are kept in small cages with no access to the outside. Almost all of them exhibit signs of distress such as excessive pacing and toe sucking. If there were no prospect of improving their living conditions the only humane alternative would be euthanasia.

The case for the Sun Bear Centre is further justified by the environmental education argument. For a large furry mammal, there is a surprising lack of awareness of this species in Borneo.

Compare them to orang-utans which are instantly recognisable to most people. In my opinion it would be difficult to justify more orang-utan sanctuaries or education centres on conservation grounds. For that species (and possibly primates in general) our energy is now better deployed on in-situ conservation.

A good example is the Hutan Kinabatangan Orang-utan Conservation Project (Hutan) started by French NGO HUTAN. This tackles the human/animal relationship by training the local community as field workers and developing community based eco-tourism dependent on wild orang-utans.

Unfortunately this kind of project cannot reverse the habitat fragmentation due to expansion of palm oil plantations. One way to do this is to leverage the public awareness campaigns of zoos and sanctuaries to raise money to outbid the plantations.

This approach has seen recent success with a campaign by World Land Trust and LEAP to buy up land in the Kinabatangan to be designated for conservation in perpetuity.

The future survival of Sun Bears depends on similar coordinated conservation strategies. Once the pressing need for animal welfare is met, there is exciting potential for the Borneo Sun Bear Conservation Centre to expand its influence to reverse habitat loss and conserve wild populations.

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