Skip to content
Menu
REDD-Monitor
  • Start here
  • About REDD-Monitor
  • REDD: An introduction
  • Contact
REDD-Monitor

What is a forest?

Posted on 3 November 200820 March 2015
Tweet about this on Twitter
Twitter
Share on LinkedIn
Linkedin
Share on Facebook
Facebook
Email this to someone
email

The way that forest is defined is crucial to whether REDD will be successful in preventing deforestation. As the Rainforest Foundation notes, “Using FAO’s definition of forest, monoculture plantations, highly degraded forests and even clear-cut areas ‘expected’ to regenerate, are all counted as forests.”

Earlier this year, the UN Forum on Forests (UNFF) held an online discussion about Forests and Climate Change. Meine van Noordwijk, the Regional Coordinator for South East Asia of the World Agroforestry Centre made the following post, outlining some of the problems associated with the way forests are defined.

Noordwijk makes a second point, that trees are not only found in forests and argues that “Trees managed by farmers and all forms of agroforestry and community forest management should not be excluded from the discussion.”

What is a forest?

By Meine van Noordwijk
A submission to the UNFF Secretariat Online Forum on Forests and Climate Change, 11 July 2008

A major issue in the efforts to single out forests in the discussion on climate change is that of its scope — linked to the definition of forest that is used. The internationally accepted definition of forest has two components: one that specifies canopy cover and tree height, and one that refers to the institutional framework of forestry, as it includes “areas normally forming part of the forest area which are temporarily un-stocked as a result of human intervention such as harvesting or natural causes but which are expected to revert to forest”.

The tree height/crown cover part qualifies any oil palm or fastwood plantation as forest. The second phrase, intended to allow clear felling – replanting to occur within the forest realm, makes the intent of recovery of woody vegetation enough for an area to remain forest. In Indonesia, for example, this means that the 63% of the land indicated as permanent forest estate still is forest — even though 50% of the area does not currently meet the crown cover definition. It allowed officials to state that ‘there is no deforestation’ in the country that has the highest global emissions from change in terrestrial carbon stocks. Interestingly, the forest definition also allows ‘shifting cultivation’ as activity within the forest, as long as the woody fallow is expected to reach 5 m height and 30% crown cover — so up to fallow periods of say 5 years. The forest definition also allows large-scale destruction of mixed tropical forest and its replacement by fastwood monocultures to be touted as forest improvement — despite the considerable carbon debt that this change incurs.The forest definition also means that many intended A/R CDM [Afforestation and Reforestation Clean Development Mechanism] projects in Indonesia failed to get approval because they are planned for parts of the ‘forest domain’ that lost their tree cover before 1990 but still are, institutionally, forest.

In fact in Indonesia there is as much chance that a unit of land meets the crown cover definition of forest whether it is inside or outside the forest domain. If REDD and similar mechanisms become de facto restricted to the ‘forest domain’, large volumes of (potential) emission are missed, many stakeholders are left out of the discussion. Based on our engagement with the debate so far, I can see only a landscape-wide carbon accounting, that includes all peatlands and trees whether they do or do not belong to an institutional forest category or not, be effective. It should be managed and monitored at the landscape scale by government entities that have responsibilities for livelihoods of the people as well as the environmental quality.

With due apologies to the many well-intended foresters in the tropics and elsewhere, the forests and trees of the world are too important to be left into foresters’ hands and existing forest institutions are not able to effectively deal with the climate change consequences in changes in the woody cover of the world. Trees managed by farmers and all forms of agroforestry and community forest management should not be excluded from the discussion. Realistic, conditional and voluntary arrangements should be based on changes in C stocks (accounted for in the comprehensive AFOLU [Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Uses] framework).

 

Tweet about this on Twitter
Twitter
Share on LinkedIn
Linkedin
Share on Facebook
Facebook
Email this to someone
email

Related

3 thoughts on “What is a forest?”

  1. soknas says:
    28 November 2008 at 5:49 pm

    I believe that the current definition of the forest will lead to a new forest with low biomass density and less commercially valuable timber. definition should be defined in terms of stock as well.

  2. Lauren says:
    9 March 2010 at 7:37 am

    A Forest is a wide verity of plants and trees. We have lost over 1/4 of our forest.

  3. Laurel says:
    9 March 2010 at 7:39 am

    Forest are very imp. to our wold but forest are not appreciated.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

SUBSCRIBE!

Enter your email address to receive notification of new posts.

Recent themes
Natural Climate Solutions
WWF's conservation scandals
Aviation and offsetting
Conservation Watch

REDDisms

“I look at the price in the morning and don’t want to get out of bed.”

— A London-based emissions trader, November 2011

Recent Posts

  • Graeme Biggar, Director-General of the UK’s National Economic Crime Centre: “There is not a sufficient deterrent for fraudsters and there is insufficient recourse for victims”
  • Coronavirus notes #7: How the Colombian government is rolling back social and environment safeguards during the pandemic
  • Peru cancels its World Bank FCPF Carbon Fund programme
  • The World Bank Forest Carbon Partnership Facility’s latest hot air scam: Retroactive credits
  • Some questions for Frithjof Finkbeiner, founder of Plant-for-the-Planet

Recent Comments

  • Chris Lang on Blackmore Bond collapse: Financial Conduct Authority is “responsible for every penny lost”
  • Sam on Blackmore Bond collapse: Financial Conduct Authority is “responsible for every penny lost”
  • barrywarden on Coronavirus notes #7: How the Colombian government is rolling back social and environment safeguards during the pandemic
  • Chris Lang on Why has the Financial Conduct Authority not taken down the website of the clone scam “Good Investment Advisors”?
  • fred bloke on Bill Gates: “Now some of these offsets are very complicated. Ah, you know, trees for example . . .”

Issues and Organisations

AB 32 Boiler rooms Bonn California Can REDD save ... ? Carbon accounting Carbon Credits Carbon Offsets CDM Conservation-Watch Conservation International COP21 Paris Deforestation FCPF FERN Financing REDD Forest definition Fossil fuels FPP Friends of the Earth FSC Greenpeace Guest post ICAO Illegal logging Indigenous Peoples Natural Climate Solutions NGO statements Plantations Poznan R-M interview REDD and rights REDD in the news Risk RSPO-Watch Safeguards Sengwer Sustainable Forest Management The Nature Conservancy Ulu Masen UN-REDD UNFCCC World Bank WRM WWF

Countries

Australia Bolivia Brazil Cambodia Cameroon Canada China Colombia Congo Basin region DR Congo Ecuador El Salvador European Union France Germany Guatemala Guyana Honduras India Indonesia Kenya Laos Luxembourg Madagascar Malaysia Mexico Nicaragua Nigeria Norway Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Philippines Republic of Congo Sweden Tanzania Thailand Uganda UK Uncategorized United Arab Emirates USA Vietnam West Papua
©2021 REDD-Monitor | Powered by WordPress and Superb Themes!