QUAFORD · Towards a Worldwide Quantification of Forest Degradation

Towards a Worldwide Quantification of Forest Degradation

Owing to the lack of a clear, operational definition of forest degradation within the framework of the UN-REDD+ initiative, only deforestation activities are currently strictly considered in the international carbon emissions trading system. This implies that large amounts of carbon emissions that may be occurring due to degradation of forested areas may not be taken into account in the calculations, because these areas are still classified as forest. Moreover, the methods currently used to quantify forest degradation involve assessment of some indicator of forest degradation at two different times and comparison of the values obtained at each time. Because forests grow and develop slowly, any changes that may have occurred can only be detected after long intervals. Thus, with the currently used methods, the occurrence and extent of forest degradation can only be determined after a long delay. Repeated assessments are not usual in most areas where forest degradation is recognised to be a problem, and global emissions due to forest degradation are therefore unknown, as is the importance of this phenomenon in different countries and biomes. The above-mentioned problems imply that the potential of forests to sequester carbon via reduction in forest degradation is unknown, as is the potential contribution of forests to mitigating climate change. Moreover, because the currently used methods apply the absolute values of forest degradation indicators, the extent of forest degradation cannot be compared in biomes in which the values of the indicator used are very different. This is a very serious problem, as restoration priorities for different types of forest or biomes cannot be defined. These deficiencies reduce the credibility of the process of estimating forest degradation and represent a serious problem regarding the demand for transparent, verifiable and reproducible methods of quantifying forest degradation – a demand brought about by the increasing awareness of climate change in society. The objective of the QUAFORD project was to develop a new methodology for estimating the occurrence and extent of forest degradation based on information obtained in a single inventory. The proposed methods consider the maximum biomass achievable in a given site at maturity as a reference value for comparison with the actual biomass stocks.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union