国际气候制度下的林业政策研究

围绕国际气候谈判中已经出现的一系列与林业议题相关的国际和国家林业政策,结合各国为实施国家低碳发展战略而制定的林业政策,对目前国际气候制度下的林业政策存在的问题及其发展趋势可能对我国的潜在影响进行了分析,从宏观政策、项目管理政策等方面对我国现有林业政策与应对全球气候变化战略的适应性进行了研究,提出了我国参与国际气候林业议题谈判及实施国家适当减缓行动框架的林业政策建议。     

Deforestation and land tenure in Mexico: A response to Bonilla-Moheno et al.

Bonilla-Moheno et al. published an interesting paper on land tenure as a determinant of deforestation in Mexico, in Land Use Policy in 2013. In this review, we focus critically on the methodology used by the authors to reach two key conclusions. Firstly, we suggest that their use of coarse resolution MODIS EVI data to assess deforestation rates may have resulted in an erroneous conclusion, that forest area in Mexico is increasing rather than decreasing. This finding is contrary to official data and to other recent scientific assessments. Secondly, we question their conclusion that territories under the tenure of ‘comunidades indigenas’ are less likely to experience deforestation, and more likely to experience expansion of forest area, than those under ‘ejidal’ tenure. We believe that the sampling method, which involved the selection of municipalities with high concentrations of one particular type of tenure, and which eliminated the 60% of municipalities which contain mixed forms of tenure, biased the sample, particularly for the case of comunidades. The comunidades included in the sample are almost all found in a single region of the country, which may represent a special case. In reality comunidades are much more widespread through the country. Moreover we find that the explanation given by the authors for the relative success of comunidades in conserving their forests is not founded in data from any study of process at the local level.     

Learning through practice? Learning from the REDD+ demonstration project,Kalimantan Forests and Climate Partnership (KFCP) in Indonesia

Despite a growing recognition of the importance of social learning in governing and managing land use, the understanding and practice of learning has received limited attention from researchers. In global environmental programs and projects aimed at supporting sustainable land use in developing countries, learning is often promoted but without explicit learning goals. The focus may be on capacity building and community participation, and on testing policy tools, rather than on collaborative social learning. In this study, we looked behind the rhetoric of learning in the Kalimantan Forests and Climate Partnership (KFCP), a large demonstration project for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) in Indonesia. The novelty of such mechanisms, linked to international forest carbon outcomes, means that learning lessons provides a rationale for REDD+ pilot activities. We used a qualitative approach to examine the nature and type of learning that occurred in the KFCP. While the stated project aims were to support policy experimentation and apply learning, the project design was highly technical, and project decision-making did not explicitly encourage joint problem solving. Despite the project’s shortcomings, we identified that learning did occur by the end of the project in ways that were different to the initial goals. Our findings suggest that flexibility and openness in project design and implementation can enable different local actors to define shared learning agendas in ways that are meaningful for them. Designing and implementing environmental projects, and learning goals within them, should attend to the needs and aspirations of those who will have to live with their long-term consequences. Learning should be integrated into international environmental programs and projects at all levels, including for policy and funding bodies, rather than focusing on local capacity building and similar project ‘benefits’. Interviewees’ eagerness to learn suggests that building approaches to social learning into program design has the potential to yield opportunities for learning beyond REDD+ to other forms of policy experimentation and governance innovations.     

Sowing the seeds of sustainable rural livelihoods? An assessment of Participatory Forest Management through REDD+ in Tanzania

Participatory forest management (PFM) initiatives have emerged worldwide for a range of aims including to improve forest governance, enhance resource conservation and to increase rural people’s access to and benefits from forest resources. Some of these initiatives have also received climate finance support to enhance their impact on mitigation. However, their effects on forest governance and livelihoods are complex and remain poorly studied. In this article, we address this gap by analysing governance and livelihood changes in a PFM initiative in Tanzania that has received funding as a REDD+ pilot site. Based on qualitative governance analysis and quantitative livelihood panel data (2011–2014) that compares villages and households within and outside the project, we find that improvements to forest governance are substantial in project villages compared to control villages, while changes in income have been important but statistically insignificant, and driven by a regional sesame cash crop boom unrelated to enhanced forestry revenues. Focusing on whether PFM had enhanced other wealth indicators including household conditions and durable assets, our analysis shows again no significant differences between participant and control villages, although the participant villages do have, on average, a greater level of durable assets. Overall, our findings are positive regarding forest governance improvements but inconclusive regarding livelihood effects, which at least in the short term seem to benefit more from agricultural intensification than forestry activities, whose benefits might become more apparent over a longer time period. In conclusion we emphasize the need for moving towards longer term monitoring efforts, improving understandings of local dynamics of change, particularly at a regional rather than community level, and defining the most appropriate outcome variables and cost-effective systems of data collection or optimization of existing datasets if we are to better capture the complex impacts of PFM initiatives worldwide.     

Can carbon-trading schemes help to protect China's most diverse forest ecosystems? A case study from Xishuangbanna,Yunnan

Xishuangbanna has been largely transformed from biodiverse natural forests and mixed-use farms into monoculture rubber plantations in just twenty years. This conversion has expanded into forests previously protected by the community and onto marginal sites at high-elevation. Market-based ecosystem payments, especially carbon financing, are potential tools to prevent further forest loss in China. Here, we compare rubber net present value (NPV), carbon sequestration, and seed-plant species diversity for Xishuangbanna given three land-use scenarios: Business-As-Usual (BAU), Economic Oriented Scenario (EOS) and Conservation Oriented Scenario (COS) using a previously published spatial map of rubber profitability. The EOS achieved the greatest rubber profit but caused substantial reductions in natural forest area, biodiversity and carbon stocks. The EOS also requires substantial immigration of workers into a remote and ecologically important region with little social infrastructure for basic security, food security, health-care and education, causing frequently ignored costs. As expected, the COS will maintain the highest levels of natural forest area, sequester 57% more carbon, and 71% more biodiversity than EOS. Given the conservation value of the carbon stores and rich biodiversity residing in Xishuangbanna's natural forests, reducing rubber NPV only marginally would probably cost less than attempting to recover these resources. We recommend that rubber plantations be limited to established, productive lowland areas whilst protecting intact high-elevation forest and reforesting low-productivity plantations. These actions will enhance carbon sequestration and biodiversity conservation. Management policies focused solely on profits, like the EOS scenario, will fail to sustain the entire range of natural resources and ecosystem services. The prices in the carbon market would have to be considerably larger than they are currently to compete with the profitability of rubber.     

气候变化和林业:REDD入门

在如何应对气候变化的讨论中,最有争议的问题之一是REDD(减少毁坏和林地退化造成的碳排放)。在基于市场减排战略中的作用,分析审查REDD活动的成本表明,REDD不但在减少GHG排放的全球战略中发挥重要作用,还可以保护热带雨林提供生物多样性和重要生态系统服务。但是REDD项目限于在一定地域,除非全球森林都被纳入REDD,否则漏洞无法消除,此外,REDD在政策设计问题上存在一定争议,因此还需进一步的研究讨论。     

聚焦哥本哈根气候变化峰会:回顾与前瞻

联合国气候变化会议于2009年12月7-19日在哥本哈根召开,受到了国际社会前所未有的关注。回顾了哥本哈根气候变化峰会的背景,指出了谈判中的各种利益集团及其争夺的焦点,阐述了哥本哈根峰会的最终结果,分析了目前国际气候变化谈判的主要进展,并就未来进行了展望。     

林业政策的制定与创新文献综述

搜集大量相关文献,分析比较了世界各国学者在林业政策方面进行的研究,介绍了世界主要国家林业政策的特点,就林业政策的制定、检验、评估的相关研究以及在森林管理实践中发展起来的社区森林模式、REDD机制和可持续森林管理理念进行了综述,最后阐述了少量学者在林业政策理论方面所做的研究。通过综述发现,对林业政策的评估与检验未形成有代表性的方法,对林业政策在实施环节的问题亦缺乏深入研究。     

Public policies can reduce tropical deforestation: Lessons and challenges from Brazil

Reducing carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation now constitutes an important strategy for mitigating climate change, particularly in developing countries with large forests. Given growing concerns about global climate change, it is all the more important to identify cases in which economic growth has not sparked excessive forest clearance. We address the recent reduction of deforestation rates in the Brazilian Amazon by conducting a statistical analysis to ascertain if different levels of environmental enforcement between two groups of municipalities had any impact on this reduction. Our analysis shows that these targeted, heightened enforcement efforts avoided as much as 10,653 km² of deforestation, which translates into 1.44 × 10⁻¹ Pg C in avoided emissions for the 3 y period. Moreover, most of the carbon loss and land conversion would have occurred at the expense of closed moist forests. Although such results are encouraging, we caution that significant challenges remain for Brazil's continued success in this regard, given recent changes in the forestry code, ongoing massive investments in hydro power generation, reductions of established protected areas, and growing demand for agricultural products.     

A game of give and take: The introduction of multi-layer (water) safety in the Netherlands and Flanders

At the beginning of the 21st century, the Netherlands and Flanders introduced a risk-based approach to flood risk management (FRM), labelled as multi-layer (water) safety. In contrast to a flood defence approach, risk-based management stresses the need to manage both the consequences and probability of a flood. The concept has developed differently in the two countries, as we conclude from a discursive-institutionalist research perspective. The Netherlands is characterised by a high institutionalization of the traditional flood defence discourse and a more closed policy arrangement, whereas in Flanders, the flood defence discourse is less institutionalized and the arrangement is more open. In both countries we see an opening of the arrangement preceding the establishment of multi-layer (water) safety, but at the same time, actors stress different aspects of the concept in order to increase its compatibility with the existing policy arrangement. In the Netherlands, the focus is on probability management, in Flanders on consequence management. In the Netherlands, multi-layer (water) safety as a concept could be established because it stabilises the system in the short-term by reinforcing the importance of flood defence, whereas in Flanders, policymakers were receptive to the concept because it supports a shift of responsibility towards actors outside traditional water management.     

越南矿产资源状况及合作前景分析

越南是我国邻邦,其国内矿产资源丰富,且需要引进国外投资发展经济,中越两国在矿产资源领域有广阔的合作前景。越南国内法律体系不完善,环境门槛提高,以及中越两国经贸问题及历史遗留问题尚未完全解决,给我国投资越南矿业带来了挑战。应从四方面着手应对挑战:对越南矿业投资环境进行详细考察,作好投资可行性研究;充分利用地理优势,扶持有实力的边境企业;依法保护生态环境;政府与企业联动,打开越南矿业市场。     

Of mice and men: Why the unintended consequences of carbon markets matter

Land tenure remains one of the most critical factors determining equity under REDD+, as we demonstrated through our previous article, ‘Roots of inequity: how the implementation of REDD+ reinforces past injustices”. Githiru responded to this paper, with some apparent challenges to both the empirical basis and theoretical arguments, that we had put forward. In this rebuttal, we demonstrate that there were no empirical differences between our original paper and Githiru’s response that had bearing on our findings, but that there are substantial differences in our interpretations of legality and equity, and consequently divergence about who can expect to benefit from REDD+. In a context where land ownership has historically and presently involved processes of dispossession, marginalization and even evictions, this rebuttal illustrates the complexity of the dominant discourse on land tenure and benefits under REDD+ and shows how social safeguards will need to take historical context and people’s current entitlements and agency into account, if equitable outcomes are to be defined and realized.