Transcript Climate Change: Impacts and adaptation options in mountain

Operationalizing Forestry
mitigation projects under CDM
T P Singh
Director, TERI School of Advanced Studies
New Delhi, India
Opportunity in India
Enormous degraded areas
Vicious cycle of population pressure
resulting in environmental degradation
and increased poverty
Virtuous cycle of forest/land restoration
leading to poverty alleviation and
sustainable development
Enabling Environment
National Forest Policy 1988
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Increase forest cover to 33% of
geographical area
Linkage of Industry and Private tree
growers
Peoples’ involvement in Forest
Management
National Forestry Action Program 1999
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Expanding forest area
Improving forest productivity
CDM & Sink projects
Restricted to Afforestation and
Reforestation
Up to 1% of 1990 on base emission
level can be claimed as CERs
Unresolved issues in sink
projects
Baselines
Additionality
Permanence
Leakage
Measurement, monitoring, evaluation,
verification & certification
Transaction costs
Questions that need to be
addressed
What is the definition of Afforestation
and Reforestation
What constitutes sustainable
development
What category of land will be eligible
What would be the potential eligible
afforestation and reforestation activities
What will be the Institutional
mechanism to implement identified
activities
Definitions of Forest,
Afforestation and Reforestation
In the Marrakesh Accord, forests,
afforestation and reforestation have
been defined as follows:
Forest is defined as “a minimum area
of land of 0.05-1.0 hectares with tree
crown cover (or equivalent stocking
level) of more than 10-30% with trees
with the potential to reach a minimum
height of 2-5 meters at maturity in situ”
Definitions of Forest, A & R
Afforestation is defined as “the direct humaninduced conversion of land that has not been
forested for a period of at least 50 years to
forested land through planting, seeding and/or
the human-induced promotion of natural seed
sources”.
Reforestation is defined as “the direct humaninduced conversion of non-forested land to
forested land through planting, seeding and/or
the human-induced promotion of natural seed
sources, on land that was forested but that
has been converted to non-forested land”.
Eligible Project Activities
Farm Forestry
Strip Plantations
Joint Forest Management
Plantation of commercial timber species
Raising of orchards
Farm Forestry
Will probably meet the criteria of
sustainable development and suitability
of land category
Highly desirable and cost effective from
the developing country perspective
Can result in growth of wood based
industries
Farm Forestry (Cont…)
Institutional mechanism could include
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Farmers’ cooperatives
Tree growers’ cooperatives
Linkages of farmers with Industry
Farm Forestry (Potential)
Case Study Pilibhit District, U.P.
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Estimated available trees: 12.3 million
Estimated Potential: 26.4 million
Potential Carbon storage: 35,200t per year
Farm Forestry (Potential)
Haryana survey results 55 million trees
(constituting 10.3 million cu.m volume of
growing stock) were found outside the
forest areas in village woodlots, farm
forestry, along roads, canals, bunds and
rail tracks.
Potential
Farm Forestry (8 mha)
Potential
Strip plantations (3 mha)
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Long rotation tree species
Peoples’ involvement in
Forest Management
Joint Forest Management Program
States trying to innovate and improve
upon the existing program
Forest Development Agencies (FDA).
Peoples’ involvement in
Forest Management
FDA will provide the funnel mechanism
through which assistance under various
schemes would flow and be targeted in
the areas covered by the FDA.
FDAs registered as federation of village
forest committees/ ecodevelopment
committees.
Can FDAs be geared to become the
hub of Carbon mitigation projects??
Establish linkages to develop
carbon markets
Thank You