Across the Congo Basin it is more profitable to cut down the
forest and replace it with cash crops, and REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from
Deforestation and Forest Degradation) schemes are of little help to reverse
this trend, according to a new study. Enforcing sustainable logging and
assigning a monetary value to the carbon stored in forest concessions managed
under the REDD+ mechanism will not be enough to curb deforestation in Central
Africa. Given the importance of the forests in the Congo Basin in mitigating
climate change, a study highlights that even when the value of the carbon
stored by a hectare of sustainably managed forest concessions is added to the
value of the timber, the economics of the production don’t change. The net
present value of carbon stored on a hectare of forest concessions is just USD
113, still not enough to give sustainably managed forest concessions a
financial edge over agro-industrial expansion in the Congo Basin.
Research from the Center for International Forestry Research
(CIFOR) and CIRAD, a French agricultural and development research center revealed
the extent to which concessions in Cameroon and Congo are threatened by the
push for agro-industrial plantations, primarily rubber and oil palm. In Cameroon, for example, 10 forest logging
concessions, 14 forest reserves and six protected areas are under threat from
existing industrial plantations seeking to expand. The threat is smaller and
less immediate in Congo, involving just two significant projects to promote
cocoa and oil palm plantations. But it is likely that in both countries, future
agro-industrial projects will intensify the risk to and the loss of, permanent
forests.
There are many reasons for the dramatic expansion of cash
crop production—both industrially and by smallholders—in the two countries.
“First of all, industrial agriculture is seen as a major
driver of economic development strategies that countries in the Congo Basin
have adopted in recent years,” Lescuyer said. “It’s seen as a way to generate
formal employment opportunities, increase government revenues and exports, and
as a contribution to national development.”
Many national and multinational companies are ready to
invest large amounts of money in agro-industrial oil palm and rubber projects
in the region and profit from rising prices for these commodities on
international markets. But there is more to it than that. Cash crops also offer
the opportunity to secure—and sometimes to grab—land holdings, with the aim of
making a profitable investment. As a
result, projects involving agro-industrial expansion can garner favor with
national authorities and other potential investors. Cash crops are generally
more profitable than logging if the timber from a forest concession is
harvested sustainably, the study found. In Cameroon, for example, the rubber
from one hectare of an industrial plantation was nearly six times as valuable,
at USD 8,045, as the timber from a hectare of a sustainably managed forest
concession, with a value of USD 1,408. With the exception of smallholder cocoa
production in Cameroon, cash crops were more profitable than timber harvested
from sustainably managed concessions. Since 2009, Cameroon has witnessed a
sharp rise in the number of investors seeking land for palm oil plantations. At
least 6 companies are applying for the allocation of over 1 million hectares of
land in the forest areas of the southern part of the country, which is about
4.7 per cent of the country’s total forest area of 21,245,000 hectares, says a
2012 report. With industrial palm oil production being a key element of the
Cameroonian government’s poverty reduction strategy, it is willing to offer
concessions to companies demanding large acreages of land in forested zones for
oil palm production. http://blog.cifor.org/10285/palm-oil-development-in-cameroon-an-urgent-need-for-a-national-strategy#.VOLYavmUeJY
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