The likely mechanism for implementing REDD policy in Tanzania

Abstract

Till 2012, establishing new forest is the only eligible practice for forest carbon trading under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Management of natural forest is not credited at present. Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD) policy, is an alternative mechanism that is still discussed for the post 2012 regime. Under REDD, countries would, on a voluntary basis, aim to reduce the rate at which their forests are being lost, and receive compensation in proportion to the carbon emissions saved compared to a baseline reference scenario which represent the ‘without intervention’ case. The REDD policy is therefore likely to be undertaken nationally, the country deforestation baseline would be determined by depicting historical land use changes from satellite imagery and typical carbon stock data for different types of forests to calculate the changes in terms of tons of carbon. After developing national level reference scenarios for the entire country, a system of ‘nested baselines’ i.e. an interlocking set of baselines that covers the whole country and sums to the national baseline is needed. ‘Nested baselines’ are necessary to operationalize REDD internally for the different geographic regions and to account for different forest regimes e.g. national parks, forest reserves, community forests, and private forests. This system is needed in order to provide incentives to stakeholders who are responsible for reductions in carbon losses within the country. In line with the current forest policy, the government is urged to consider Participatory Forest Management (PFM) as part of their approach under REDD. The established village framework in the Tanzanian Government offers the opportunity for implementing the REDD policy nationally. This can be achieved through developing and implementing land use plan for each village. From the start of the project, monitoring is done to determine the standing stock in both protective forests and productive forests. For a village to be rewarded carbon credits at any accounting time there must be evidence of forest enhancement or reduced deforestation/degradation. Since there are no data on carbon stocks, studies on forest inventories using methodology such as that developed by the Kyoto: Think Global Act Local research project are recommended. Possible strategy for the scaling up of the participatory inventory methodology is to train villagers and their local supporting forest staff to carry-out forest inventories on their own in the entire country.