No description available.

Monitoring large forest areas is presently feasible with satellite remote sensing as opposed to time-consuming and expensive ground surveys as alternative. This study evaluated, for the first time, the potential of using freely available medium resolution (30 m) Landsat time series data for deforestation monitoring in tropical rainforests of Kalimantan, Indonesia, at sub-annual time scales. A simple, generic, data-driven algorithm for deforestation detection based on a consecutive anomalies criterion was proposed. An accuracy assessment in the spatial and the temporal domain was carried out using high-confidence reference sample pixels interpreted with the aid of multi-temporal very high spatial resolution image series. Results showed a promising spatial accuracy, when three consecutive anomalies were required to confirm a deforestation event. Recommendations in tuning the algorithm for different operational use cases were provided within the context of satisfying REDD+ requirements, depending on whether spatial accuracy or temporal accuracy need to be optimized.

Monitoring large forest areas is presently feasible with satellite remote sensing as opposed to time-consuming and expensive ground surveys as alternative. This study evaluated, for the first time, the potential of using freely available medium resolution (30 m) Landsat time series data for deforestation monitoring in tropical rainforests of Kalimantan, Indonesia, at sub-annual time scales. A simple, generic, data-driven algorithm for deforestation detection based on a consecutive anomalies criterion was proposed. An accuracy assessment in the spatial and the temporal domain was carried out using high-confidence reference sample pixels interpreted with the aid of multi-temporal very high spatial resolution image series. Results showed a promising spatial accuracy, when three consecutive anomalies were required to confirm a deforestation event. Recommendations in tuning the algorithm for different operational use cases were provided within the context of satisfying REDD+ requirements, depending on whether spatial accuracy or temporal accuracy need to be optimized.

Land-cover change is the second most important source of anthropogenic greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions, generating around 7-14% of the total carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions around the world. More than one million km2 of tropical forests were lost during the period 2000-2012 around the world, from which forests-to-pasture conversion was the most common land-use change in key regions such as the Amazon. Strategies to mitigate climate change by reducing deforestation and forest degradation (e.g. REDD+) require country- or region-specific information on carbon (C) stocks in forests and their dynamics with land-cover change, in order to develop accurate Forest Reference Emission Levels (FRELs) to be submitted to the UNFCCC as benchmarks for assessing the performance of countries participating in REDD+ activities. Nevertheless, FREL development is incipient and their elaboration is mostly based on highly uncertain Tier 1 information from IPCC. In this research I present the first region-specific Tier 3 information and emission factors on soil, dead wood and below-ground biomass C pools and their dynamics during 20 years of forest-to-pasture conversion under different management practices in the Colombian Amazon. Based on these region-specific Tier 3 emission factors on C stocks in forests and their change after pasture establishment, I report for the first time the net CO2 emissions from forest-to-pasture conversion in the Colombian Amazon. The results also demonstrate that Tier 3 region-specific information is 70% higher and is substantially more accurate than estimates based on using IPCC Tier 1 information, which emphasizes the urgency for countries implementing REDD+ to develop improved data and methodologies. The information reported here will contribute to strengthening the REDD+ National Strategy of Colombia, by supplying accurate data and models that can be included within the next Colombian FREL.

No description available.

The primary objective of the international initiative, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+), is to conserve carbon by protecting forests and/or planting trees. The World Bank's Forest Partnership Carbon Facility (FPCF) introduced the REDD+ program to Costa Rica in 2008 and consultation with key stakeholders has been ongoing since. The major participants involved in the program include small landowners, representatives of the timber industry, and indigenous nations. Notwithstanding some native groups' opposition to and misunderstanding of the REDD+ program, the Costa Rican government signed an agreement with the World Bank (WB) in 2013 guaranteeing the sale of up to $63 million in carbon credits through the REDD+ program (World Bank, 2013). The government of Costa Rica has plans to continue implementing the initiative, despite the intense opposition of a number of Bribris, an indigenous group located in Talamanca in the eastern portion of the country near the border with Panama. The Bribri are also the largest native population in Costa Rica. This inquiry samples indigenous peoples' perspectives, specifically the Bribris from Talamanca and the Ngäbes from Abrojos Montezuma, concerning key elements of the REDD+ program to understand more fully why they perceive the program the way they do. The principal findings of this study concerning those views include the following: the government has violated indigenous people's rights throughout the REDD+ implementation process, many interview respondents remarked that they lacked information about REDD+, feared privatization of their land, and were opposed to the initiative's commodification of natural resources. These results illuminate key policy and implementation concerns that could inform government and World Bank policy, while also providing study participants an opportunity to exercise individual agency concerning the topic. This research contributes to the growing body of literature about REDD+ by providing the first-hand perceptions of members of Costa Rican indigenous communities of the initiative and their stated reasons for those views. / Master of Urban and Regional Planning / The main goal of the international initiative, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+), is to conserve carbon by protecting forests and/or planting trees. The World Bank’s Forest Partnership Carbon Facility (FPCF) introduced the REDD+ program to Costa Rica in 2008 and has engaged in a process of consultation and information sessions with small landowners and representatives of the timber industry and indigenous nations. The Costa Rican government signed an agreement with the World Bank (WB) in 2013 guaranteeing the sale of up to $63 million in carbon credits via the program and the government appears to be relying on indigenous peoples’ land because indigenous territories comprise some 20% of the country’s forested lands (Government of Costa Rica, 2015; World Bank, 2013). Moreover, some native groups, including the Bribris, the largest indigenous group in the nation, located in Talamanca in the eastern portion of the country near the border with Panama, have publicly opposed doing so (World Bank, 2013). This study explored indigenous peoples’ perspectives, specifically the Bribris from Talamanca and the Ngäbes from Abrojos Montezuma, concerning key elements of the REDD+ program to understand better why they perceive the program as they do. Key findings from those interviews include the fact that the government has violated indigenous people’s rights throughout the REDD+ implementation process and that many native residents lacked information about the program and feared privatization of their land. In addition, many of those interviewed were opposed to the initiative’s basic premise; the commodification of natural resources. These results highlight key REDD+ policy design and implementation concerns in Costa Rica that could inform both government and World Bank policy in that nation. More generally, this research contributes to a growing body of literature concerning REDD+ and indigenous peoples. The findings offered here may now be compared to those of other analyses investigating the purport of this initiative from the vantage point of native peoples of other developing nations.

La thèse s’intéresse à l’émergence de la déforestation tropicale comme problème que doivent traiter les négociations internationales sur le changement climatique. Depuis 2005, les représentants gouvernementaux du monde entier investiguent les moyens d’organiser l’action internationale pour inciter, économiquement, à maintenir sur pied le stock de carbone des forêts tropicales. D’un tel projet découle une foule de problèmes que la thèse propose d’analyser par une enquête ethnographique et multisite. Certains sont engendrés par la dimension mondiale de l’entreprise : il faut décider entre Etats souverains, trouver des méthodes de mesure comparables et concevoir des systèmes de redistribution monétaires. Quand d’autres sont plus spécifiques aux pays forestiers tropicaux et leur forte dépendance à l’aide au développement : il faut faire avec les défaillances de l’administration et tenir compte de la parole des populations dites locales. La thèse montre que ces problèmes engendrent une activité distribuée, fragile et sélective. Parce que la coercition n’est pas possible, les ambitions de cet aménagement international sont modestes et les montages conçus pour inventer un mode de décision internationale, pour négocier la justesse des mesures du carbone ou pour induire des conduites morales font proliférer les médiations. / My work is about the constitution of tropical deforestation as a problem for climate change negotiations. Since 2005, governmental representatives have been investigating the means through which international action could be organized in order to maintain the carbon sequestered by tropical forests using economic incentives. This initiative has been fostering a range of issues that I analyze through a multisite ethnographical inquiry. Some of these problems are related to the initiative’s global dimension: sovereign states have to collectively decide, comparable measurement methods have to be created, and monetary redistribution systems have to be elaborated. Other problems are more specific to the situation of developing countries strongly dependent on development aid. In this latter case, public administration weaknesses cannot be ignored and the demands formulated by the so-called local communities cannot be bypassed. I show that these issues produce a distributed, fragile and selective activity. Since coercion is not an option, the ambitions of these international adjustments are modest and the arrangements created to invent international decision-making, to negotiate the right measure or to induce moral conducts make mediators proliferate.

Apesar da reconhecida importância da fragmentação no balanço de carbono (C) das florestas tropicais, a maior parte do conhecimento a cerca deste assunto provém de estudos conduzidos na floresta Amazônica e desconsidera processos relacionados à influência da configuração da paisagem. Em particular, estimativas precisas da emissão de CO2 devido à fragmentação devem levar em consideração efeitos aditivos de borda e a idade das bordas. Nós investigamos estes efeitos sobre parâmetros estruturais de florestas (densidade, altura e área basal das árvores) e no estoque de C em oito fragmentos florestais (13 a 362 ha) antigos (>=70 anos), cercados de pastagens, em uma região de Mata Atlântica. Amostramos 5297 troncos, divididos em quatro tratamentos em cada um dos fragmentos: interior dos fragmentos; bordas antigas (>50 anos) em quina; bordas antigas retas; bordas novas (<50 anos) retas. Calculamos a biomassa acima do solo (BAS) através de equações alométricas que consideram a altura do tronco e seu diâmetro à altura do peito (DAP) e convertemos esse valor em carbono estocado na vegetação. O estoque de C foi altamente variável entre tratamentos, abrangendo valores entre 6.61 Mg ha-1 até 87.96 Mg ha-1 (média= 29.55 ± 14.97 Mg ha-1). As áreas de interior continham um estoque de C maior, bem como maior área basal, densidade de árvores e árvores mais altas do que as de borda. No entanto, a seleção de modelos não detectou influência da idade ou de efeitos aditivos no estoque de C. Nossos resultados sugerem que os padrões de efeitos de borda para a Mata Atlântica são diferentes dos observados em florestas tropicais fragmentadas mais recentemente, como é o caso da Amazônia. A Mata Atlântica tem um longo histórico de perturbação humana e uma dinâmica complexa de desmatamento e regeneração, que pode levar a uma condição de degradação generalizada, posto que até áreas mais distantes das bordas em manchas remanescentes de Mata Atlântica já perderam quantidades significativas de carbono. Nestas paisagens antrópicas, os efeitos de borda que atuam sobre a mortalidade de árvores e na redução da BAS podem ser mais abrangentes do que inicialmente estimado pelos modelos construídos para a floresta Amazônica. / Despite the importance of fragmentation for tropical forest carbon (C) balance, most of our knowledge comes from few sites in the Amazon and disregard underlying processes that relates landscape configuration with C stocks. Particularly, accurate estimation of CO2 emission from fragmentation must account for additive edge effects and edge age. Here we investigated those effects on carbon stock and forest structure (density, height, basal area) in eight old-growth forest (>=70 years) fragments (13 to 362 ha), surrounded by pasture, in the Brazilian Atlantic forest region. We sampled 5,297 stems in four distinct treatments, distributed in each fragment: fragment interiors; old (> 50 years) corner edge; old straight edge; and new (< 50 years) straight edge. Aboveground biomass (AGB) was estimated from tree height and diameter at breast height (DBH), and converted to carbon. C stock was highly variable between treatments, scoring from 6.61 Mg ha-1 up to 87.96 Mg ha-1 (average of 29.55 ± 14.97 Mg ha-1). Interior treatments had higher C stock, basal area, tree stem density and taller trees than edges. We found no significant effects of edge age or additive edge effects on C stocks. These results suggest that edge effects in the heavily-disturbed Atlantic rainforest may differ than those observed in more recently fragmented tropical forests, such as the Amazonian forest. In heavily human-modified landscapes, edge effects on tree mortality and reduction on AGB may contribute to overall higher levels of degradation across entire forest fragments, reducing the observed difference between edge and interior habitats, and suggesting that existing Amazonian forest models may underestimate the true impacts of tropical forest fragmentation for C storage.

O mecanismo de REDD+ tem sido colocado como central para incentivar medidas de mitigação das alterações climáticas globais envolvendo os ecossistemas florestais, sendo importante a definição das modalidades de financiamento a serem adotadas no âmbito da Convenção Quadro das Nações Unidas para as Mudanças Climáticas (UNFCCC, na sigla em inglês) para a viabilização destes incentivos. Buscando contribuir para este debate, o presente trabalho analisa a relação entre as características dos projetos de REDD+ no Brasil e suas modalidades de financiamento, baseadas em fundos públicos ou no mercado de carbono. A análise é feita aplicando-se estatística descritiva e testes de hipótese a dados coletados em bases de dados de acesso público, no período de janeiro a outubro de 2015, para 89 projetos piloto de REDD+ aprovados no mercado voluntário de carbono e no Fundo Amazônia. Para descrever as características dos projetos são utilizadas 21 variáveis, elaboradas a partir de informações referenciadas como relevantes na literatura sobre REDD+ e sobre instrumentos econômicos de política ambiental. Com base nos resultados foi possível identificar que os projetos sob cada modalidade de financiamento possuem claras diferenças, convergentes com distintas concepções teóricas sobre instrumentos econômicos baseados em incentivo, sendo que os Projetos financiados por fundos públicos estão mais alinhados aos conceitos propostos pela economia ecológica e os projetos financiados por mercados de carbono são mais aderentes às premissas da economia ambiental neoclássica. Por outro lado, foram identificadas também características em que o contraste entre as duas categorias de projetos não se mostrou tão evidente, representando a necessidade destes projetos de adaptar-se às complexidades do contexto florestal e à eficiência necessária para garantir resultados esperados do REDD+. Argumenta-se assim em favor da adoção de modalidades mistas de financiamento, capazes de gerar financiamento simultaneamente a projetos sob fundos públicos e sob mercados de carbono / The REDD+ mechanism is central to foster global forest-based climate change mitigation measures. And for it to work properly, it is of great relevance that financial mechanisms to be used for these incentives are defined within the UNFCCC. Aiming to contribute to this debate, this study analyses the relationship between the characteristics of REDD+ projects in Brazil and the financing mechanisms they use: public funds or carbon markets. The analysis is conducted using statistical descriptive analysis and hypothesis testing to 21 variables that describe core project characteristics. Data was collected from public access databases between January and October 2015 for 89 projects approved under the Voluntary Carbon Market and under the Amazon Fund. Based on the analysis results it is possible to identify that the projects under each category presents clear distinctions related to conceptual differences between the financial mechanisms: projects under public funds are aligned mainly with the ecological economics view and projects under the carbon market are more adherent to the neoclassical environmental economics view. On the other hand, there are some characteristics in which this contrast is not so clear, and that represent the projects efforts to adapt to the complexities of the forest sector and to the efficiency and efficacy requirements necessary achieve the expected REDD+ results. It is argued that that a mixed financial mechanism should be adopted, in order to enable simultaneous financing to both public fund and carbon markets projects

O mecanismo de REDD+ tem sido colocado como central para incentivar medidas de mitigação das alterações climáticas globais envolvendo os ecossistemas florestais, sendo importante a definição das modalidades de financiamento a serem adotadas no âmbito da Convenção Quadro das Nações Unidas para as Mudanças Climáticas (UNFCCC, na sigla em inglês) para a viabilização destes incentivos. Buscando contribuir para este debate, o presente trabalho analisa a relação entre as características dos projetos de REDD+ no Brasil e suas modalidades de financiamento, baseadas em fundos públicos ou no mercado de carbono. A análise é feita aplicando-se estatística descritiva e testes de hipótese a dados coletados em bases de dados de acesso público, no período de janeiro a outubro de 2015, para 89 projetos piloto de REDD+ aprovados no mercado voluntário de carbono e no Fundo Amazônia. Para descrever as características dos projetos são utilizadas 21 variáveis, elaboradas a partir de informações referenciadas como relevantes na literatura sobre REDD+ e sobre instrumentos econômicos de política ambiental. Com base nos resultados foi possível identificar que os projetos sob cada modalidade de financiamento possuem claras diferenças, convergentes com distintas concepções teóricas sobre instrumentos econômicos baseados em incentivo, sendo que os Projetos financiados por fundos públicos estão mais alinhados aos conceitos propostos pela economia ecológica e os projetos financiados por mercados de carbono são mais aderentes às premissas da economia ambiental neoclássica. Por outro lado, foram identificadas também características em que o contraste entre as duas categorias de projetos não se mostrou tão evidente, representando a necessidade destes projetos de adaptar-se às complexidades do contexto florestal e à eficiência necessária para garantir resultados esperados do REDD+. Argumenta-se assim em favor da adoção de modalidades mistas de financiamento, capazes de gerar financiamento simultaneamente a projetos sob fundos públicos e sob mercados de carbono / The REDD+ mechanism is central to foster global forest-based climate change mitigation measures. And for it to work properly, it is of great relevance that financial mechanisms to be used for these incentives are defined within the UNFCCC. Aiming to contribute to this debate, this study analyses the relationship between the characteristics of REDD+ projects in Brazil and the financing mechanisms they use: public funds or carbon markets. The analysis is conducted using statistical descriptive analysis and hypothesis testing to 21 variables that describe core project characteristics. Data was collected from public access databases between January and October 2015 for 89 projects approved under the Voluntary Carbon Market and under the Amazon Fund. Based on the analysis results it is possible to identify that the projects under each category presents clear distinctions related to conceptual differences between the financial mechanisms: projects under public funds are aligned mainly with the ecological economics view and projects under the carbon market are more adherent to the neoclassical environmental economics view. On the other hand, there are some characteristics in which this contrast is not so clear, and that represent the projects efforts to adapt to the complexities of the forest sector and to the efficiency and efficacy requirements necessary achieve the expected REDD+ results. It is argued that that a mixed financial mechanism should be adopted, in order to enable simultaneous financing to both public fund and carbon markets projects