Remote-Sensing Evidence about National Deforestation Rates in Developing Countries: What can Be Learned from the Last Decade (original) (raw)
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An assessment of deforestation and forest degradation drivers in developing countries
Environmental Research Letters, 2012
Countries are encouraged to identify drivers of deforestation and forest degradation in the development of national strategies and action plans for REDD+. In this letter we provide an assessment of proximate drivers of deforestation and forest degradation by synthesizing empirical data reported by countries as part of their REDD+ readiness activities, CIFOR country profiles, UNFCCC national communications and scientific literature. Based on deforestation rate and remaining forest cover 100 (sub)tropical non-Annex I countries were grouped into four forest transition phases. Driver data of 46 countries were summarized for each phase and by continent, and were used as a proxy to estimate drivers for the countries with missing data. The deforestation drivers are similar in Africa and Asia, while degradation drivers are more similar in Latin America and Asia. Commercial agriculture is the most important driver of deforestation, followed by subsistence agriculture. Timber extraction and logging drives most of the degradation, followed by fuelwood collection and charcoal production, uncontrolled fire and livestock grazing. The results reflect the most up to date and comprehensive overview of current national-level data availability on drivers, which is expected to improve over time within the frame of the UNFCCC REDD+ process.
Major drivers of deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries and REDD+
Identifying major drivers of deforestation and forest degradation has been an important task at the present context of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation "REDD+". At present, many bilateral and multilateral projects are carrying out pilot activities for the REDD+ in developing countries and many Asian countries are being engaged in this process. Asian countries namely Nepal, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR are also in the process and have initiated some preparedness activities, where annual loss of forest covers was found different in the period of 1990 to 2010. This loss was due to several drivers which are not understood well but it is important for designing the REDD+ projects. This paper aims to identify major drivers of deforestation and forest degradation in these countries. This study identified that conversion of forest land into agriculture land, illegal harvesting, infrastructure development, forest fires, encroachment, grazing etc are major causes in the region. These drivers are associated with various underlying factors mainly socioeconomic, and policy governance and the magnitudes of drivers are different in each country. These should be addressed with government intervention to change dependency on the forest resources, income sources of the people and institutional set up of the forestry sector.
Deforestation and Forest Land Use: Theory, Evidence, and Policy Implications
The World Bank Research Observer, 1996
The topic of deforestation is seldom examined from the perspective of prices and responses to resource scarcity. This omission creates important errors in policy. Resource scarcity induces investments in both commercial and subsistence uses of the forest once prices overcome the costs of establishing property rights, forest management, and the returns from alternative agricultural uses of the land. Therefore deforestation will induce price increases and investments in forestry well before deforestation attains its physical limit. These prices and costs will alter the boundaries among several important classes of forest land: sustainable private forestry, the forested commons, unsustainable open-access forests, and unused residual forest. The greatest impact on the world's forests will come from refocusing the policy dialogue on the cost factors that determine these boundaries, including agricultural support policies, local concentrations of nonmarket environmental resources, and policy failures that distort incentives to invest in forestry. In locations where reforestation induces large price changes, policymakers must remain attuned to the likelihood that deforestation-induced changes in the prices of forest products and forest policies may cause significant shifts in the activities of the poorest people. C onserving scarce forest resources is a challenge for both high-and lowincome countries. Contemporary forest policy and forest management both reflect this challenge. Forest policy reflects international concern with the pressures of deforestation, including trade in tropical timber, the con : version of forests to agricultural uses, and the effects of deforestation on climate change, biodiversity, and local communities dependent on forest resources. Forest management features the transition to managed forests as deforestation causes
Reflections on the tropical deforestation crisis
Biological Conservation, 1999
Tropical forests do far more than sustain biodiversity; they are homes to indigenous peoples, pharmacopeias of natural products, and provide vital ecosystem services, such as¯ood amelioration and soil conservation. At regional and global scales, tropical forests also have a major in¯uence on carbon storage and climate. I highlight these bene®ts, then assess the pattern and pace of tropical forest destruction in the Americas, Asia, and Africa. Asia emerges as the most immediate concern, because it has less surviving forest than the other two regions and higher relative rates of deforestation and logging. At regional and national levels, however, there is enormous variation in rates of forest loss. I discuss some factors that tend to promote forest conversion in developing countries, and propose that four Ð human population pressure, weak government institutions and poor policies, increasing trade liberalization, and industrial logging Ð are emerging as key drivers of forest destruction. # 0006-3207/99/$ -see front matter # 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. P I I : S 0 0 0 6 -3 2 0 7 ( 9 9 ) 0 0 0 8 8 -9
Drivers of tropical forest loss between 2008 and 2019
Scientific Data, 2022
, a crowdsourcing campaign to understand what has been driving tropical forest loss during the past decade was undertaken. For 2 weeks, 58 participants from several countries reviewed almost 115 K unique locations in the tropics, identifying drivers of forest loss (derived from the Global Forest Watch map) between 2008 and 2019. Previous studies have produced global maps of drivers of forest loss, but the current campaign increased the resolution and the sample size across the tropics to provide a more accurate mapping of crucial factors leading to forest loss. The data were collected using the Geo-Wiki platform (www.geo-wiki.org) where the participants were asked to select the predominant and secondary forest loss drivers amongst a list of potential factors indicating evidence of visible human impact such as roads, trails, or buildings. The data described here are openly available and can be employed to produce updated maps of tropical drivers of forest loss, which in turn can be used to support policy makers in their decision-making and inform the public. Background & Summary Reducing the rate of deforestation is a key global challenge for addressing climate change 1 , halting biodiversity loss 2 and preserving crucial forest ecosystems services, such as carbon sequestration, timber production, and water retention 3. The current rates of deforestation are estimated to be around 10 million ha per year, driven primarily by agricultural expansion 4. However, the direct and indirect causes of deforestation are complex and often comprise multiple factors that operate at the same time, e.g., agricultural expansion in combination with wood extraction and expansion of infrastructure 5. To date, most of these drivers have been determined at a more local scale through case studies or empirical research. With the opening up of the Landsat archive (30 m spatial resolution), Google Earth access to very high-resolution satellite imagery time series (up to 1 m spatial resolution), and improved computing power and storage, the drivers of deforestation have now been mapped globally, covering the years 2001 to 2015 6. The results indicated that around 50% of deforestation was due to
2013
Policies for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, known as REDD, and enhancing forest carbon stocks, known as REDD+, could provide a way for tackling global warming and climate change. In this regard several proposals were designed, yet their implementation poses significant methodological problems. One of those problems can be the interactions between the direct and indirect causes (drivers) of deforestation. Deforestation is a transformation of forestland for various land uses. This chapter therefore analyses trends in world deforestation in relation to different geographical regions and its drivers. A cross-sectional econometric model, recursive in nature, is estimated in two stages for addressing the interaction between the causes. Firstly, the direct causes of deforestation are regressed on indirect causes, by Email: rculas@csu.edu.au; Address: PO Box 883, Orange, NSW 2800, Australia
Forest Policy and Economics, 2013
Rigorous, objective evaluation of forest conservation policies in developing countries is needed to ensure that the limited financial, human, and political resources devoted to these policies are put to good use. Yet such evaluations remain uncommon. Recent advances in conservation best practices, the widening availability of high-resolution remotely sensed forest-cover data, and the dissemination of geographic information system capacity have created significant opportunities to reverse this trend. This paper provides a nontechnical introduction and practical guide to a relatively low cost method that relies on remote sensing data to support ex post analysis of forest conservation policies. It describes the defining features of this approach, explains the broad empirical challenges to using it and the main strategies for meeting these challenges, catalogs the literature, discusses the requisite data, provides some practical guidance on modeling choices, and describes in detail two recent studies.
2008
Global climate policy initiatives are now being proposed to compensate tropical forest nations for reducing carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD). These proposals have the potential to include developing countries more actively in international greenhouse gas mitigation and to address a substantial share of the world's emissions which come from tropical deforestation. For such a policy to be viable it must have a credible benchmark against which emissions reduction can be calculated. This benchmark, sometimes termed a baseline or reference emissions scenario, can be based directly on historical emissions or can use historical emissions as input for business as usual projections. Here, we review existing data and methods that could be used to measure historical deforestation and forest degradation reference scenarios including FAO (Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations) national statistics and various remote sensing sources. The freely available and corrected global Landsat imagery for 1990, 2000 and soon to come for 2005 may be the best primary data source for most developing countries with other coarser resolution high frequency or radar data as a valuable complement for addressing problems with cloud cover and for distinguishing larger scale degradation. While sampling of imagery has been effectively useful for pan-tropical and continental estimates of deforestation, wall-to-wall (or full coverage) allows more detailed assessments for measuring national-level reference emissions. It is possible to measure historical deforestation with sufficient certainty for determining reference emissions, but there must be continued calls at the international level for making high-resolution imagery available, and for financial and technical assistance to help countries determine credible reference scenarios. The data available for past years may not be sufficient for assessing all forms of forest degradation, but new data sources will have greater potential in 2007 and after. This paper focuses only on the methods for measuring changes in forest area, but this information must be coupled with estimates of change in forest carbon stocks in order to quantify emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.