Commercial logging of native forests is integral to the economies, and central to the development, of many tropical nations (FAO 2003). At the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Montreal in December 2005 there was a concerted international interest in quantifying, slowing and even providing incentives for slowing rates of deforestation and forest degradation. Deforestation is obvious and is the clearance of land for ranching or agricultural production. This form of deforestation is clearly visible from satellite imagery. A more insidious form is forest degradation that occurs through legal and illegal logging and which opens up frontiers for agricultural expansion through the construction of roads and other infrastructure. Internationally, there is interest in improved forest management, in particular conversion to reduced impact logging, motivated by biodiversity conservation, sustainable forest management, timber certification, and even the potential for increasing forest carbon stocks. The technical problems are not insignificant; to establish and credit any reduction in the rate, the carbon emissions for the business as usual must be well-defined plus the carbon impact of any activities that are taken.
Année de publication
2007
Auteurs
Pearson T R H; Walker S M; Moore N; Dushku A; Pearson R E G; Brown S; Roshetko, J.M.
Langue
English
Mots clés
carbon, land use, sustainable land management, logging
Géographique
Indonesia
