Elsevier

Biological Conservation

Volume 154, October 2012, Pages 1-8
Biological Conservation

Special Issue Article: REDD+ and conservation
The critical importance of considering fire in REDD+ programs

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2012.03.034Get rights and content

Abstract

Fires are increasingly responsible for forest degradation in the humid tropics due to the expansion of fire-dependent agriculture, fragmentation, intensive logging practices and severe droughts. However, these forest fires have been largely overlooked by negotiations for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+). This paper examines how forest fires affect REDD+ schemes by compromising carbon permanence; undermining the potential of sustainable forest management and reforestation and regeneration activities in tropical countries; and threatening the additional benefits that can be accrued from REDD+, including biodiversity conservation and rural poverty alleviation. Narrowly focusing on avoiding deforestation, the sustainable management of forests or regeneration schemes will not always guarantee protection from fire occurrence, and investments in tropical forests may ultimately fail to achieve long-term emission reductions unless they also reduce the risk of forest fires. Integrating forest fire reduction into REDD+ presents many challenges, requiring: changes in agricultural practices that take place outside of the remaining forests; the monitoring and prediction of spatio-temporal patterns of forest fires across whole biomes; guarantees of additionality; avoiding leakage of fire-dependent agriculture; ensuring that responsibilities for fire management are fairly distributed; protection for rural livelihoods; and that any new activities result in positive outcomes for local people.

Highlights

► Forest fires affect REDD+ schemes in the humid tropics. ► They compromise carbon permanence. ► They undermine the potential of sustainable forest management and regeneration activities. ► They threaten additional REDD+ benefits, including biodiversity conservation and poverty alleviation. ► Forest fire avoidance should be integrated into all aspects of REDD+.

Introduction

Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) represents a set of policy approaches and positive incentives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through the conservation and management of forests in developing countries. REDD+ includes five activities or interventions, namely: reducing emissions from deforestation, reducing emissions from forested degradation, sustainable management of forests, conservation of (existing) forest carbon stocks and enhancement of forest carbon stocks (e.g. through regeneration and planting in previously forest land). Under official safeguard guidance provided by the Cancun Agreements of the UNFCCC (Decision 1/CP.16) REDD+ activities should also be consistent, amongst other things, with “the objective of environmental integrity and take into account the multiple functions of forests and other ecosystems”, as well as “be implemented in the context of sustainable development and reducing poverty, while responding to climate change”.

Forest fires have important implications for all five REDD+ activities, as well as the intended additional environmental and social benefits. Although forest fires are historically rare in most humid tropical forests (Meggers, 1994), they have increased in extent and frequency since the 1960s due to the spread of fire-dependent agriculture such as cattle ranching (Uhl and Buschbacher, 1985), the increase in forest fragmentation and degradation (Siegert et al., 2001), and extreme climatic events leading to severe droughts (Cochrane et al., 1999, Lewis et al., 2011, Marengo et al., 2008). These fires include low-intensity understorey fires that can burn slowly through undisturbed or selectively logged primary forests (Barlow and Peres, 2004b), and higher intensity fires that occasionally reach into the canopy of forests that have been heavily logged, previously burned, or where weather conditions permit (Cochrane, 2003).

Despite the prevalence and importance of forest fires, to date they have received very little attention in REDD+ negotiations, capacity building and pilot work. For example, the UN-REDD Programme Strategy 2011–2015 does not refer to fire, and fire reduction has not been identified as an explicit REDD+ activity (Anon, 2011). Furthermore, very few national or individual REDD+ or Payment for Ecosystem Services (PESs) initiatives incorporate fire management, although the importance of fire reduction has recently been recognised in projects in Indonesia and Uganda (Anon, 2009, Peskett et al., 2011).

This paper examines the potential importance of fire for the REDD+ process. Recent negotiations at COP 17 in Durban emphasized the importance of environmental and social safeguards and associated information systems for the implementation of REDD+. Fire reduction represents both a valid forest conservation activity in its own right and a central environmental safeguard as it cuts across many of the issues relevant to the design, implementation and assessment processes of any REDD+ activity. First, we review the impact of forest fires on the permanence of carbon stocks in humid tropical forests, biodiversity conservation and human livelihoods. We then explore the challenges involved in incorporating fire-reduction strategies into REDD+ initiatives. Our focus is fire-sensitive humid tropical forests, which includes the closed-canopy evergreen forests that make up the vast majority of tropical forests in Asia, west Africa and Latin America: we do not consider fire-adapted ecosystems, including deciduous or semi-deciduous tropical dry-woodlands and savannas, which represent a very different ecological context and where fire reduction policies could have negative ecological consequences (Stickler et al., 2009).

Section snippets

Tropical forest fires compromise carbon permanence

The increase in forest fires in the humid tropics (Cochrane, 2003, Cochrane and Barber, 2009) threatens the long-term permanence of carbon stocks in undisturbed primary forests, logged forests, and forest regeneration and reforestation projects. When measured against adjacent unburned forests, even low to medium severity fires in undisturbed or lightly degraded old-growth forest can kill over 50% of trees ⩾10 cm in diameter at breast height (Barlow and Peres, 2006a) (Fig. 1) and almost all of

Incorporating effective fire management into REDD+: the key challenges

The previous section demonstrated why forest fire prevention is fundamental to the success of REDD+ in humid tropical forests, helping guarantee the permanence of carbon stocks, reducing risks inherent in forest regeneration projects and the sustainable management of forest timber, preventing biodiversity loss, and protecting the livelihoods of forest-dependent people. However, as with other aspects of REDD+, achieving these benefits depends upon successful implementation (Blom et al., 2010,

Conclusions

Forest fires are one of the most important forms of tropical forest degradation due to the predominance of fire-dependent agriculture, and increases in forest flammability caused by intensive logging practices, fragmentation and climate change. Given the scale of this threat, reducing the risk of forest fires is necessary to achieve the central REDD+ objective of securing and enhancing forest carbon stocks, as well as respecting key biodiversity and social safeguards. Achieving this fire

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Darwin Initiative (17-023), the UK National Environment Research Council (NE/G000816/1), Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecuária – Embrapa (SEG 02.08.06.005.00), the Instituto Nacional de Ciência e Tecnologia – Biodiversidade e Uso da Terra na Amazônia (CNPq 574008/2008-0), and Biological Diversity Program of the Earth Science Division of the NASA Science Mission Directorate (NNX07AF16G). L.E.O.C. Aragão acknowledges the support of the UK Natural Environment

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