REDUCING EMISSIONS FROM DEFORESTATION AND FOREST DEGRADATION (REDD+)
Forests enhance the well-being of communities and come with attractive benefits such as biodiversity, water regulation and soil fertility. Unfortunately, many markets and agricultural practices still foster unsustainable forest practices, eliminating these benefits and making forestry one of the leading drivers of greenhouse gas emissions (approx. 15-20%). The UN‘s REDD+ program aims to reduce emissions and protect forests by introducing sustainable practices in local communities and discouraging carbon dependence in global markets. Recently, a variety of voluntary carbon markets have also emerged alongside UN-REDD+. These offer alternative frameworks with which projects can track their efforts to protect forest carbon and reduce forestry emissions.
RSS has participated in REDD+ readiness and voluntary carbon projects since carbon accounting began, aiding projects ranging from forest monitoring and methodology development to international capacity building. Read on for an overview of REDD+ tasks assumed by our company, or visit our projects page to learn more about specific case studies.
Monitoring activities identify the current state of forests, the extent and density of forest cover, and changes in these parameters. These trends and conditions are identified using spaceborne and airborne data as well as field data. The resulting datasets form the basis for a wide variety of REDD+ applications, including carbon stock and emission estimates, legal action, conservation, local development and more.
The REDD+ framework maintains that humans and forests can thrive in tandem, provided certain guidelines are followed. In contrast to other methods where such guidelines would decouple humans and their activities from forests entirely, REDD+ promotes sustainable forest management through functional, carbon-neutral or carbon-positive business models. Such models balance the conservation of forest carbon stocks against economic gain, provide attractive incentives for carbon friendly practices, and help maintain a happy equilibrium.
PROJECT DESIGN AND VALIDATION
Extracting carbon standards or accounting schemes from your field work can be challenging, but with our help, the process becomes simple.
Having advised a variety of clients at all stages of the typical (carbon) project cycle, our experience covers everything from selecting appropriate methodologies to defining project goals and verifying achieved emission levels.
Vegetation biomass and its associated carbon stocks are the currency that drives REDD’s conceptual economy. Biomass modelling provides a way to measure the economy’s health.
The advanced algorithms used by RSS combine the best LiDAR data with an up-scaling method, to provide a practical, accurate and cost-efficient biomass modelling solution for any spatial scale.
Pre-defined methodologies ensure that carbon stocks and GHG emissions are quantified in an acceptable, measureable, and conservative manner. Existing carbon accounting schemes were created on these principles, and contain sound rules and procedures for calculating GHG emissions in a standardized fashion. Three of these founding methodologies were developed by RSS (within the VCS and Plan Vivo frameworks), and are still widely used today.
SUPPORT FOR LOCAL COMMUNITIES
Certain communities and livelihoods rely heavily on surrounding forest resources and the indispensable ecosystem services they provide. As a result, any changes to the forest directly impact the well-being of such communities. Forest protection that takes this into consideration directly involves the community, builds social programs and targets personal development, ultimately maintaining, if not vastly improving the well-being of forest-dependent communities.
RSS supports local communities through capacity building and on-the-job training for forest inventory and mapping.