International - Raising the value of biodiversity-friendly cocoa and carbon storage: ensuring sustainable incomes around Gola Rainforest National Park

国际 - 提高生物多样性友好型可可和碳储存的价值：确保戈拉雨林国家公园周围的可持续收入

• 批准号: NE/S013644/1
• 负责人: David Coomes
• 金额: $ 4.21万
• 依托单位: University of Cambridge
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2019 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=NE%2FS013644%2F1
• 关键词: International; Raising; value; biodiversity; friendly

Tropical forest and agriculture compete for the same land, but the benefits are distributed to different people. Two key benefits from tropical forest are the continued existence of tropical nature, which enriches our lives, and the storage of carbon in living trees, which regulates our climate. These benefits accrue to people around the world. In contrast, most of the benefits from agriculture (food and income) accrue to the farmers themselves, plus local and national consumers and local and national economies.The consequence is that land-use decisions in any given location will mostly be made by the beneficiaries of agriculture rather than the beneficiaries of tropical forest, for obvious reasons: farmers know that they benefit from converting forest to agriculture and are able to convert their desires into action, while the beneficiaries of tropical forest are global but individually only benefit a little and also find it difficult to convert their desires into action. The result is that tropical forest continues to be converted to agriculture.One way to try to right this imbalance in decision-making is to use what are called 'market-based instruments' to make the conservation of tropical forest at least as profitable to local communities and to agribusinesses as farming. Two such instruments are carbon-credit payments and premium-pricing for agricultural goods. For instance, consumers of airline flights and 'Rainforest-Friendly' chocolate bars pay extra, and the generated income streams are directed to countries and their local populations to compensate them for not converting forest to farmland.However, the big challenge is to verify that these payments are indeed resulting in the conservation of forest that is high in carbon and biodiversity. Until recently, this challenge has been largely insuperable because of the technical difficulties of measuring forest carbon and biodiversity in ways that are auditable and low-cost. Recently, though, major advances in satellite remote-sensing are making it possible to track changes in forest cover, repeatedly and at a low cost per image (in many cases, free to download).The remaining challenge is to interpret these data-rich images in order to quantify changes in the amount of aboveground biomass (to measure change in carbon stocks) and in the amount of biodiversity that those forests contain. This challenge requires on-the-ground measurements to generate the data that can be used to interpret raw data from satellite-based sensors.This is what we propose, working in the 908 km2 forested buffer zone of the Gola Rainforest National Park (GRNP) in Sierra Leone, where cocoa, a potential driver of deforestation, is the main cash crop. So far, only a small portion of farmers receive a higher price for 'Rainforest Friendly' cocoa, and payments for carbon are jeopardised if forest clearance in the buffer zone continues unabated. Satellite-based mapping would inform sustainable development plans that allow cocoa expansion to be directed to areas of low carbon and biodiversity, and ongoing satellite-based monitoring would make it possible for anyone to easily verify whether carbon stocks and biodiversity are being protected. Carbon payments and premium-pricing for Rainforest-Friendly cocoa would therefore be safeguarded and expanded, improving the welfare of the 22,000 people living in the buffer zone while also reducing pressure on forest.This project has been co-designed with GRC-LG who manage the GRNP and who identified the need for a better decision-support system. The current method of verification for carbon payments via five-yearly surveys is inefficient and does not account for biodiversity. GRC-LG has strong links with the Sierra Leone government, placing this work in a strong position to influence the management of other forest-carbon projects in West Africa.Keywords: biodiversity, carbon, cocoa, REDD+, metabarcoding, remote sensing, tropical forest

热带森林和农业竞争同一土地，但收益分配给了不同的人。热带森林的两个主要好处是，热带性质的持续存在，它丰富了我们的生活，以及在活树中储存碳，这可以调节我们的气候。这些好处是世界各地的人们。相反，大多数来自农业（食品和收入）所带来的好处是农民本身，以及当地和民族消费者以及地方和国民经济。结果是，任何给定地点的土地利用决策主要是由农业受益者做出的，而不是由农民的受益人而不是农民受益于森林，而森林受益于森林，而不是在森林中受益：热带森林的受益者是全球性的，但单独的受益只是有些受益，也发现很难将他们的欲望转变为行动。结果是，热带森林继续转化为农业。一种试图使这种不平衡决策纠正这种失衡的方法是使用所谓的“基于市场的工具”来使热带森林的保护至少对当地社区和农业为农业。两个这样的工具包括碳信用额的支付和农业用品的高价定价。例如，航空公司航班和“雨林友好”巧克力棒的消费者额外支付，而产生的收入来源是针对国家及其当地人口的，以弥补他们不将森林转换为农田的赔偿。直到最近，由于以可审计和低成本的方式测量森林碳和生物多样性的技术困难，这一挑战在很大程度上是不容置疑的。但是，最近，卫星遥感的重大进步使得可以反复跟踪森林覆盖物的变化，并且每图像的成本低（在许多情况下，免费下载）。剩余的挑战是解释这些富含数据的图像，以量化地上生物量的数量（碳库存中的变化）以及这些森林含量的含量（以衡量碳量的变化）以及这些森林中包含的生物差异。这项挑战需要现场测量，以生成可用于解释基于卫星的传感器的原始数据的数据。这就是我们提出的建议，在塞拉利昂的Gola Rainforest国家公园（GRNP）的908 km2森林缓冲区（GRNP）的工作中，是可可，那里是Cocoa，在那里，主要现金造成了主要现金造成的司机，是辩护司机的潜在驾驶员。到目前为止，只有一小部分的农民获得了“热带雨林友好”可可的价格更高的价格，如果缓冲区的森林清除持续不断，碳的付款将受到危害。基于卫星的地图将为可持续发展计划提供信息，该计划允许可可扩展到低碳和生物多样性地区，并且持续的基于卫星的监控将使任何人都可以轻松验证是否受到碳股票和生物多样性的保护。因此，将保护和扩展对雨林友好的可可的碳支付和高价定价，从而改善了居住在缓冲区中的22,000人的福利，同时还降低了对森林的压力。该项目已与GRC-LG共同设计了GRC-LG，该项目管理GRNP并确定了更好的决策系统。当前通过五年调查进行碳支付的验证方法效率低下，并且不考虑生物多样性。 GRC-LG与塞拉利昂政府有着牢固的联系，将这项工作置于强大的位置，以影响西非其他森林 - 碳项目的管理。关键词：生物多样性，碳，可可，可可+，Redd+，Metabarcoding，Metabarcoding，遥感，热带森林，热带森林