Laguna Lake basin and Sierra Madre community forests, the Philippines

Climate change is one of the primary concerns of humanity today. The third IPCC assessment report concludes that there is strong evidence that human activities have affected the world’s climate (IPCC 2001). The rise in global temperatures has been attributed to emission of greenhouse gases, notably CO 2 (Schimell et al . 1995). Forest ecosystems can be sources and sinks of carbon (Watson et al . 2000). Deforestation and burning of forests releases CO 2 to the atmosphere. Indeed, land-use change and forestry are responsible for about 25% of all greenhouse gas emissions. Forest ecosystems can, however, also help reduce greenhouse gas concentrations by absorbing carbon from the atmosphere through the process of photosynthesis. Of all the world’s forests, tropical forests have the greatest potential to sequester carbon primarily through reforestation, agroforestry and conservation of existing forests (Brown et al . 1996). Philippine forest ecosystems have likewise been a source and sink of carbon (Lasco and Pulhin 2000, 2003). Since the 1500s, deforestation of 20.9 million ha of Philippine forests contributed 3.7 billion tons of carbon to the atmosphere, 2.6 billion tons of which were released last century (Lasco and Pulhin 2000). Present land-use cover, however, also absorbs carbon through regenerating forests and planted trees. The vast areas of degraded land in the Philippines in fact offer great potential for carbon sequestration through rehabilitation activities such as reforestation and agroforestry. In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in forestry projects under the CDM in the Philippines. The objective of this paper is to present two community-based AR CDM projects being developed in the Philippines. These are the Laguna Lake basin project and the Sierra Madre project. As these projects are still under development at this time, some aspects may change in the future.

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