Report on indigenous lands, protected areas and climate change

A new study, based on a collaboration among forest scientists from 13 universities and other institutions, provides a useful overview of the importance of 'indigenous lands' and other protected areas (ILPAs) for achieving REDD. The report, titled "Indigenous Lands, Protected Areas and Slowing Climate Change", was published online yesterday in PLoS Biology.

Previous studies have estimated that the world's ILPAs contain more than 312 billion tons of carbon. Using case studies from the Brazilian Amazon, the new report estimates that deforestation in protected areas and indigenous lands is 7–11 times less than in the surrounding areas. Nevertheless, and despite their protected status, deforestation within ILPAs has not been reduced to zero. Problems related to underfinancing for operations and capital investment for many ILPAs have meant that an estimated 9,700 km² of 'protected' land in the Amazon were deforested  from 2002-2007. This represented 8% of the region's deforestation  during the period.

Several conclusions are drawn from the above. The first is that existing ILPAs are already helping substantially to reduce carbon emissions. Next is that existing levels of management leave substantial room for improvement in terms of preventing deforestation and reducing emissions, both of which should be achievable assuming adequate levels of financing and more effective management. Finally, expanding the coverage of protected areas, particularly into areas under high risk of deforestation, can have even more dramatic impacts, generating substantial emissions reductions along with significant income for the countries concerned. 

However, the devil, as they say, is in the details. One such 'detail' is the need to ensure that REDD becomes 'REDD-Plus' in the sense that it includes compensation for conservation of areas that have already been  protected.  In addition, and this is an issue which the analysis appears to ignore, there are important questions related to the opportunity costs of expanding PAs into areas under substantial threat of deforestation. These areas are under threat for a reason, namely because people are finding economic opportunity there, typically either in timber cutting, conversion to agriculture or a combination of both. For this reason, REDD payments will need to reach a certain threshold before they become financially attractive.  How high this level is for different land uses and locations, together with the carbon price on offer, will be among the important determinants of whether countries will find it 'profitable' to expand their PA systems further and by how much. Valuing and assigning a price to co-benefits, such as biodiversity, will be an important strategy for ensuring that the land use decision, wherever possible, will be to let the forest stand.