Climate Field Work

The Alto Mayo River in northern Peru passes through the Andean forest on its way to the Amazon basin. Illegal land-clearing within the upper elevation areas of the watershed threatens the Alto Mayo Protected Forest, which contains habitat for many unique species. Over the past three years, CI has initiated the design and implementation of REDD+ activities in the Upper Alto Mayo watershed of San Martin as part of its forest carbon and Conservation Stewards Program portfolio. We recently secured the support of the Walt Disney Company for long-term compensation of the REDD+ initiative. Additionally, the government of Norway is providing investments for national REDD+ readiness. These initiatives aim to demonstrate the effectiveness of the REDD+ mechanism to Peru's national government.

CI has been working with partners to implement two pilot demonstrations of REDD+ in Madagascar. Building on our experience designing REDD+ activities at these sites, we are now helping to provide technical support and build capacity within the country to develop a national REDD+ strategy with the support of the government of Norway. CI also draws upon REDD+ site-level initiatives to inform national policy, project design, community engagement, benefit sharing and the Measuring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) system. In addition, we put in place a transparent and equitable performance-based system for distributing REDD+ revenues to local community stewards of REDD+ sites.

Socio Bosque grew out of CI's work with local communities and Ecuador's Ministry of the Environment. The national program, which launched in September 2008, is an evolution of Ecuador's poverty alleviation and deforestation initiatives. Socio Bosque provides an economic incentive to keep forests standing, paying indigenous and local communities to protect their forests over a 20-year period and requiring landowners and communities to develop sustainable investment plans for these funds. This institutional REDD+ framework will help the country protect its 10 million hectares (almost 25 million acres) of forest and will directly improve the living conditions of more than 1 million people.

Central Africa holds the world's second-largest tropical forest (after Amazonia), and 60 percent of it is contained within the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Building on CI's other efforts in the eastern DRC, this project will develop two contiguous, community-based REDD+ carbon projects. The site includes two government-sanctioned nature reserves comprising 340,000 hectares (more than 8,300 acres), and it is estimated that the project will prevent five million tons of C02 from being emitted into the atmosphere during the project's 20-year duration. This initiative is also supported by a REDD+ investment by the Walt Disney Company.

Currently in the design stage, this field project seeks to work in 14 million hectares (34.6 million acres) of indigenous territories, including Xingu Indigenous Park and land held by the Kayapó and other groups. A partnership of organizations – including CI, the Environmental Defense Fund and local organizations Instituto Socio Ambiental and Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazonia – are examining the feasibility of REDD+ activities across indigenous lands, and the surrounding areas. These activities are being designed with, and will be led by, the indigenous communities themselves with the approval of the Brazilian government. The partners are currently conducting preliminary analyses of future deforestation projections and supporting the capacity-building of indigenous peoples to design a management structure for this initiative.

In the three protected areas surrounding the Colombian capital of Bogotá, land-use change is threatening the viability of the forests and páramo ecosystems which constitute a critical region within the North Andean Conservation Corridor. These protected areas are crucial for the city's water supply, and serve as reservoirs for native species. Restoring this important watershed is essential to ensuring both the long-term supply of Bogotá's water and the rich biological diversity of the area. Over its 30-year life, the project will sequester carbon by planting and maintaining native trees on more than 170,000 hectares (420,000 acres) of previously deforested agricultural areas.

The state of Goias is located in central Brazil's Cerrado region, a biodiversity-rich woodland savanna that has been cultivated for sugar cane and other crops since the seventeenth century. Only 20 percent of the original habitat remains today, mostly in small pockets surrounded by agriculture. An alliance of sugarcane producers, local and international nongovernmental organizations, research organizations, and government agencies has identified a unique opportunity to reforest at least 680 hectares of private lands currently devoted to industrial sugar cane cultivation. By restoring forests in a corridor between two protected areas (Emas National Park and Rio Taquari State Park), the project will create habitat connectivity for wildlife, including many endemic plant and animal species, and compensate farmers for planting trees.

In the mountains of southwest China – home of the red panda (Ailurus fulgens), Bengali tiger (Panthera tigris tigris) and millions of people – we're working alongside the Yunnan Forestry Department and The Nature Conservancy to restore 467 hectares (1,150 acres) of locally-managed native forest and sequester an estimated 151,000 tons of CO₂ over a 30-year period. In addition to providing a source of income to the local forestry cooperative by creating and marketing carbon credits, the initiative aims to restore the buffer zone around the nature reserve, provide a fuelwood source for local villages and reduce soil erosion. This project was the first to obtain Gold-level certification under the Climate Community and Biodiversity (CCB) Standards.

WEBSITE: Climate Community and Biodiversity (CCB) Standards
IN DEPTH: Tengchong Forest Initiative, China

The Ipanema/Caratinga/Sossego ("Muriqui") Biodiversity Corridor is an extremely threatened region in the Atlantic forest of Brazil that harbors two of the most important sanctuaries for the northern muriqui (Brachyteles hypoxanthus), the largest primate in the Americas. CI is helping landowners reforest private lands with native trees, which will link existing forest fragments and expand habitat for the muriqui and other species.

Quirino province in northern Luzon, Philippines, is predominantly an agricultural area, with the majority of farming communities cultivating banana and corn crops. In order to increase forest cover while improving community livelihoods, the initiative has been designed together with local communities. The project will reforest degraded lands with a mixture of native tree species and agroforestry systems, which will provide participating farmers with a complementary source of income from the sale of fruit, in addition to traditional agricultural crops. The initiative will generate and market emissions reductions through the voluntary carbon market to help finance implementation. Thanks to support from the MoreTrees, Inc. Foundation and the Mitsubishi Research Institute of Japan, at least 177 hectares (437 acres) will be reforested.

Scientists have estimated that Colombia's Nevado del Ruiz tropical glacier has lost more than a third of its ice cap since 1970. Combined with land degradation from agricultural practices, this change is threatening water availability and food production in the historically abundant area. Partially financed by CI, a collaborative reforestation project called PROCUENCA has been officially registered with the Clean Development Mechanism under the UNFCCC. Forest restoration will have a range of positive impacts in the region, including the prevention of erosion and sedimentation – a change that will improve water quality and conserve the basin's water supply as the glacier melts. This project is helping communities step up their efforts to fight and adapt to climate change while simultaneously restoring vital ecosystems and creating new economic opportunities. So far, more than 4,000 hectares (almost 9,900 acres) of forest have been replanted.

CI is working in the state of Chiapas in Mexico to understand how changes in climate have affected farming in cocoa and coffee, as well as which parts of the region will be the most suitable to sustain these crops over the next 50 years. Partnering with Starbucks, CI is evaluating livelihood solutions for local communities and providing adjustment strategies for those most impacted by climate change.

In the Tonle Sap's floating villages, all life is dependent on the flooded forests, which provide everything from fish habitat to fuel wood. Yet climate change is already altering rainfall patterns in both China and Laos, which will result in a longer, hotter dry season for the Tonle Sap, a shift which promises to significantly shrink the lake's floodplain and have disastrous consequences for fishery yields and freshwater availability. CI scientists are examining climate change scenarios to determine which areas of the region's ecosystem are predicted to flood the most in the future so that they can be prioritized for conservation today. Local communities and the government have also created tree seedling nurseries and are concentrating on replanting the areas predicted to be the most resilient after the effects of climate change and dam construction. To help local villages become less dependent on fisheries for their entire livelihood, CI is also encouraging alternative income projects, such as floating chicken coops, piggeries and gardens, ecotourism and handicraft production.

In 2008, CI and the World Wildlife Fund organized a vulnerability assessment workshop in Madagascar. Since then, CI has been working with local communities to develop an action plan for maintaining and restoring forest connectivity in priority areas, building key knowledge about coral and mangrove systems and developing effective approaches for building resilience in these systems. The project also plans to engage with the government of Madagascar so that future planning informs natural resource management in both terrestrial and marine ecosystems. We also intend to assess the potential vulnerability of staple subsistence and cash crops to changing climate in Madagascar and to improve our understanding of how this might in turn impact future deforestation scenarios.

The unique, diverse ecosystems of the Galápagos Islands provide resources and services that support people whose livelihoods are linked to tourism, fisheries and agriculture. CI, the World Wildlife Fund and other partners recently conducted a vulnerability assessment of the region. This study highlighted the need to protect climate-vulnerable species which are critical for tourism activities (such as the Galápagos penguin (Spheniscus mendiculus) and create "no-take zones" that would protect fish stocks. In addition to strengthening ecosystem resilience, the people of the Galápagos should be working to reduce the introduction of invasive species, protect upwelling areas that support many fish species and increase education and credit access options for fishermen. The outcomes of this study are now being used to design the Galápagos Adaptation Plan, a collaborative initiative of CI and the Ecuadorian Ministry of the Environment.

The Verde Island Passage (VIP) in northern Philippines is located within the Coral Triangle, an area considered to be the center of the world's marine biodiversity. Critical marine habitats and species like whale sharks (Rhincodon typus) are already exposed to human impacts such as overfishing, pollution and coastal development. Climate change has also begun to disrupt ecological functions and ecosystem services in the area, with severe consequences for the well-being of human communities. Working with provincial and municipal governments, academic institutions, nonprofits and national government agencies, CI conducted a vulnerability assessment of the VIP. Its results provided key management recommendations and climate change adaptation strategies, such as:

• Creation of "climate-smart" marine protected areas;
• Design of guidelines for developing coastal infrastructure that can sustain climate impacts;
• Use of best management practices for fishing and increased enforcement against illegal and destructive practices (i.e. dynamite fishing);
• Diversification of livelihoods, particularly for climate change-vulnerable activities such as aquarium fishing.

These recommendations can be implemented to increase the resilience of marine ecosystems and to ensure they can adapt to future climatic and ocean conditions.

Calatagan is one of the five provinces of the Philippines' Verde Island Passage, a 1.14 million-hectare (2.8 million-acre) marine area that is a top tourist destination worldwide and one of the richest fishing grounds of the Philippines. Largely reliant on fisheries for their livelihoods, local people are indirectly dependent on mangrove forests, which provide coastal protection for fish farms, firewood, and nursery areas for commercially harvested species. However, increasing pressures from human settlement, reclamation of land for resort development, and fish pond development posed a continuous threat to this delicate ecosystem. As mangrove areas are vital to providing protection against the impacts of climate change, it is important to protect these areas and promote education on why mangroves are so valuable. Working together with the local communities of Calatagan, CI's mangrove restoration effort has already helped to increase mangrove area coverage, establish a mangrove reserve, restore unproductive fishponds; and increase public awareness of the ecological importance of mangrove ecosystems.