Opportunities to Reduce Tropical Forest Degradation and Mitigate Climate Change

After COP26 in Glasgow (2021) and the announcement of the Forest and Climate Leaders Partnership at COP27, tropical forests received renewed attention for their potential contributions to climate change mitigation. Numerous studies of nature-based and natural climate solutions contend that improved tropical forest management can be an important and cost-effective pathway towards reductions of global CO2 emissions.

The impact of tropical forest degradation on climate mitigation goals and the gains that can be made by addressing degradation are often overlooked or ignored. The most recent estimates of the potential contributions of the ‘Improved Forest Management Pathway’ (IFM) for Natural Climate Solutions in the tropics is 537 PgCO2e. Despite rates of forest degradation far exceeding those of deforestation, the former receives far less attention from environmentalists, scientists, and policy makers. Even fewer studies provide insights about how the necessary improvements can be implemented. Given that a major cause of tropical forest degradation is unsustainable and unnecessarily destructive timber harvesting, we focus here on ways to improve managed forests to reduce carbon emissions and increase carbon removals.

Along with poor timber harvesting practices, degradation is often caused by fires, illegal exploitation, and interactions among these factors. It is also important to recognize that values for one proxy of degradation - timber yield - decline with every harvest, even in forest management enterprises (FMEs) that follow government regulations and are certified as responsibly managed by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). We argue that timber yields from tropical forests can be sustained while the forests continue to deliver numerous co-benefits including decreased carbon emissions and increased carbon removals.

This report provides an overview and analysis of the current institutional, policy and technical landscapes, challenges, and opportunities to adopt and implement improved tropical forest management. The novel contribution of this report resides in its elaboration of options insufficiently considered in the forestry and carbon literature to realize improved carbon outcomes from managed forests. That is, we expand the mechanisms to achieve forest management improvements by replacing the timber harvesting approaches most commonly used with detailed ground-based options that enhance the contributions of managed and degraded tropical forests to achieve carbon-related and other goals. These options can address tropical forest degradation and are formulated through a theory-of-change (Figure 2) and related assumptions that determine the likelihood of change from poor to improved forestry practice (Table 1).

The report advances existing literature and analyses by outlining five pragmatic mechanisms through which tropical forest management can be improved, and suggests how, if substantial carbon funding is available and allocated appropriately, the transition from unsustainable forest exploitation for timber to improved forest management (IFM) can be realized.

The five recommended on-the-ground activities, if implemented, would improve the fate of tropical forests (Figure 3). Challenges and opportunities to their implementation are assessed through exploration of case studies in Loreto, Peru and Mato Grosso, Brazil. These case studies are used to take stock of the current situation and to explore the recommended paths towards IFM.