The journal Nature Geoscience recently published a study comparing the impacts of rural and urban population growth on deforestation. “Deforestation Driven by Urban Population Growth and Agricultural Trade in the Twenty-First Century” finds deforestation is positively correlated with urban population growth and agricultural exports to international markets. In rural areas, however, the link between deforestation and population growth was absent, indicating that urbanization and agricultural export-oriented economies were the primary drivers for forest loss. The study concludes that, rather than focusing on the activities of rural populations, deforestation reduction efforts should target “industrial-scale, export-oriented agricultural production, concomitant with efforts to increase yields in non-forested lands.” (SUBSCRIPTION ONLY)

According to the United Nations, 74 million acres of farmland in the developing world were acquired by foreign governments and investors over the first half of 2009 – an amount equal to half of Europe’s farmland.

A new tool from the Center for Global Development, Forest Monitoring for Action (FORMA) tool, uses satellite data to monitor tropical deforestation on a monthly basis. Using publicly available feeds from NASA and other sources, FORMA detects the spread of deforestation in areas as small as 1 square kilometer. The video above uses FORMA to animate the rapidly growing damage in Indonesia over the last four years.

Some advocates of geoengineering have touted fake, plastic “trees” as a promising technology for absorbing carbon. But other experts are promoting a solution that also filters water, encourages rainfall, prevents erosion and desertification, offers economic opportunities, and provides a vital source of food for a growing global population: real trees.

The climate community is under increasing pressure to help the developing world, especially those at the “bottom of the pyramid.” The people who did the least to cause climate change will suffer its effects the most.

A critical part of the solution to this problem will be enhancing market-based incentives for climate-friendly behavior. The projects that generate credits for sale in the carbon markets vary widely in scale. However, the most successful have focused on large, localized sites, such as the smoke stack of a single plant. These “centimeter-wide, kilometer-deep” projects are easy to monitor and verify.

In contrast, most projects that benefit the poor are “a kilometer wide, a centimeter deep,” with each family across a large territory producing a small emissions reduction. Monitoring and tracking these community-based projects is usually cost-prohibitive.

DRC: Reducing Emissions and Improving Security

A Mercy Corps project in the refugee camps in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) seeks to improve the security of women and children while simultaneously reducing carbon emissions.

In the war-ravaged province of North Kivu, the total number of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) exceeds 850,000. Demand for resources, particularly fuel wood, vastly exceeds the available supply. To collect wood, women and children have to leave the relative safety of the refugee camps, making them vulnerable to sexual assault and child abduction by rebel groups and the army. Mercy Corps surveys indicate that nine percent of women in camps have been raped or otherwise assaulted.

Mercy Corps installs fuel-efficient stoves that reduce the need for dangerous trips into the forest. A commercial carbon broker develops carbon credits from the reduction in emissions that arises from the use of stoves instead of open fires. The upfront funding from the broker supplements a UNHCR grant supporting the project, and serves to help more than 20,000 families in one of the most dangerous places on Earth.

This extreme example is one of relatively few carbon projects generating revenue that benefits vulnerable people. Yet if this kind of project can be successful in the DRC, larger projects in safer countries may be able to generate massive emissions reductions. The Copenhagen conference needs to set the stage for these types of market incentives for better climate behavior.

Raising a REDD Flag

A relatively new, UN-backed initiative known as Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) seeks to compensate forest-rich countries for protecting or regenerating their forests. However, REDD may have the unintended consequences that further erode the human rights of marginalized people dependent on those forests.

For decades, tropical forests have been logged legally and illegally by states and private companies, without any input from or compensation to indigenous forest communities, who, in many cases, were displaced or worse.

REDD thus raises a troubling question: If countries can generate carbon revenues through REDD, to whom do the revenues belong, and how will they be allocated? Many forestry ministries have a long history of corruption and mismanagement. There are already signs of ministries competing over putative REDD funds. And high-level discussions in only a few countries have included the role of communities and civil society in implementing REDD and distributing revenues.

The Copenhagen conference will be a critical milestone in the global fight to address climate change. Yet it raises significant and far-reaching questions concerning economic development and human rights of the world’s most vulnerable citizens that must not be swept under the rug.

Jim Jarvie is director of climate change, environment, and natural resources at Mercy Corps. In a recent video interview, he spoke to ECSP about how humanitarian groups are responding to new climate challenges.

Photo: Stoves that are more fuel-efficient not only help curb rapid deforestation, but help women spend less time gathering wood in dangerous areas. Courtesy Dee Goluba/Mercy Corps.

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The prevalence of armed conflict in areas of high biodiversity is alarming, though not entirely surprising. According to “Warfare in Biodiversity Hotspots” (abstract online), which was published earlier this year in Conservation Biology, 80 percent of the major armed conflicts between 1950 and 2000 took place in biodiversity hotspots. While natural resources are rarely the principal causes of conflict, their allocation and ownership are frequently among its drivers.

In the run-up to December’s Conference of the Parties in Copenhagen, the idea of REDD, Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation, is gaining greater currency as a way to bring forests into climate mitigation efforts. Australian geographer Jon Barnett of the University of Melbourne finds the principle of compensating states or communities for reducing deforestation sound. Yet he cautions that the devil is in the details when it comes to implementation. Barnett stresses that deforestation’s diverse causes is an initial challenge in designing effective responses. And to whom should payments be made? Should they go to national governments that may or may not share those resources with communities affected by the restrictions on forest use?

“Kenya is destroying itself,” Julius Kipng’etich, director of the Kenya Wildlife Service, told The Observer. “The population has reached an unsustainable level. We are killing ourselves by slowly destroying the forests and settling there.” Drought, poverty, and population growth have led large numbers of the rural poor to encroach on protected forests in search of arable land, reports The Observer, jeopardizing Kenya’s food and water security and hydroelectric energy production. The government’s inability to manage land tenure has further exacerbated the situation.

In response to these developments, a local conservation group called Rhino Ark has erected a 250-mile electric fence (see photo slideshow) around the Aberdare mountain range north of Nairobi. When members began the project in 1989, they were attempting to protect the area’s rhinoceroses. However, their efforts eventually grew into a broader campaign to safeguard the Aberdares’ critical water and forest resources.

Proponents of the Aberdare fence—including Nobel Peace Prize-winning environmentalist Wangari Maathai—contend that it serves multiple purposes. First, it discourages settlers from grazing livestock in the forest or felling trees to make way for crop cultivation. Other regions of the country—notably the Mau Forest Complex, the water source for millions of people in Kenya, northern Uganda, and southern Sudan—have suffered severe deforestation and degradation, with serious consequences for human and ecological health. Forests provide a wide spectrum of essential ecosystem services, such as regulating the water cycle, filtering groundwater, and sequestering atmospheric carbon.

The fence also mitigates human-wildlife conflict, argue its supporters. According to a recent 60 Minutes report, some Maasai herdsmen have resorted to poisoning lions and other predators to protect their livestock. Farmers have targeted elephants and other animals that trample crops to safeguard their livelihoods. As a result, wildlife populations—the lifeblood of the Kenyan tourism industry—have been devastated. A study published in the Journal of Zoology found precipitous declines in wildlife at Maasai Mara, one of Kenya’s most renowned national parks. Robin Reid, a co-author of the paper, explains, “There appears to be a ‘tipping point’ of human populations above which former co-existence between Maasai and wildlife begins to break down.”

Following Aberdare’s example, the Kenyan government is considering building thousands of miles of fencing around similarly vulnerable forests and parks. Yet fences may soon prove inadequate. The country’s population has grown from 10 million to 36 million over the past 45 years, and it could exceed 65 million by 2050, given that the decline in its fertility rate has stalled. In addition, its GDP per capita has steadily decreased, leaving more than 55 percent of citizens below the official poverty line.

With more people clamoring for more resources, a sustainable future will depend on robust community conservation programs and land-rights reform. Successful models of community conservation in East Africa include the Lion Guardians and Il Ngwesi Group Ranch, as well as other efforts discussed at the Wilson Center last year. A 2008 report from the Rights and Resources Initiative argues that authorities should shift away from traditional forms of conservation, which focus on excluding people from protected areas, in favor of approaches that empower local communities to care for and benefit from the land through customary tenure or individual property rights.

Finally, Nairobi should craft national forest management practices with an eye toward ongoing international climate negotiations. Policymakers are poised to include provisions for compensating developing countries for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in the next international climate treaty, to be concluded in Copenhagen this December. Kenya could benefit substantially if the government takes appropriate action.

Photo: A giraffe in Maasai Mara, where their population has declined 95 percent over the last 15 years. Courtesy Flickr user angela7dreams.

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