While the U.S. government’s stance on climate change makes a quick about-face, I’ve been hearing more and more about a concept called  “REDD”, its implications on the environment, and its developing initiatives to keeping forests intact. REDD stands for reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation.

By definition, deforestation is the conversion of a forest to another use, and degradation is the more gradual loss of its biomass. REDD, therefore, is the protection of forests currently under threat by those two factors.

Earth’s forests have been disappearing for years. Aside from knowing that forests are home to our planet’s precious wildlife, I never questioned the idea of forest preservation, thinking it was something that simply should make sense. But there wasn’t much truth seeking done on my part, so I set out to learn about REDD and its role in the larger discussion surrounding climate change. Here’s what I discovered – starting from the roots.

“Climate change” means a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods. – UNFCC

Climate change measurable, largely influenced by people, and real:

• Increasing global temperatures (11 of the last 12 years have been the warmest on record. The Earth has gone through cycles of warming and cooling before, but not at the same rapidly regular reccurence we are seeing recently)
• Decreasing snow cover and melting glaciers
• Warming poles and sea loss in areas (Arctic Sea loss thus far is comparable to the land area of Texas, Maryland and California combined)
• Warming and acidification of our oceans (this is evidenced by widespread coral bleaching)
• Changes in precipitation patterns
• Rising sea levels in areas
• Ecosystem changes (early timing of spring events, loss of habitat, and poleward/upward shifts in plant and animal communities have been observed)

These signs are caused by the greenhouse effect, which is crucial for life on Earth but harmful in large doses. A throwback to science class reminds us that the greenhouse effect is caused by short wave radiation from the sun that is received by the Earth, which absorbs some and releases the rest back into the atmosphere in the form of longer wave infrared radiation. Infrared is light that is just higher than the red end of the color spectrum but less than microwaves. However, some of that released radiation is trapped and re-radiated back to Earth by gases that can absorb long wave radiation such as carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and halofluorocarbons (HFC’s).

How are these gases produced?
– Carbon dioxide: fossil fuel combustion, cement manufacturing, deforestation, burning of forests
– Methane: landfills, coal mining, natural gas production, livestock production, conversion of wetlands, rice paddies
– Nitrous oxide: fossil fuel combustion, nitric acid production, fertilizer use, burning of biomass
– Hydrofluorocarbons and perfluorocarbons: industrial processes, manufacturing
Sulfur hexafluoride: electrical transmission, distribution systems

Less than 10% of recorded climate change can be attributed to solar flares, orbital cycles and volcanic activity. The overwhelming majority of it is man-made. And now, carbon dioxide concentrations are at their highest level in the atmosphere in over 650,000 years, outweighing all other factors that contribute to climate change. In fact, before the Industrial Revolution, carbon dioxide levels were recorded at 275 ppm (parts per million) and has since reached almost 400. The photo below shows the breakdown of all human activity that results in the creation of carbon dioxide and other gases that absorb long wave radiation and increase the greenhouse effect.

Actions being taken to prevent the worsening of climate change itself include efforts to increase automobile efficiency, upgrade building insulation and energy systems, replace fossil fuels with renewables, and reduce deforestation. These are executed with the goal in mind to limit the Earth’s temperature increase to not more than 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels.

The above graphic demonstrates that there is a threshold when it comes to limiting global warming to 2 degrees, which is directly related to carbon emissions.

Now on to the topic of our forests and the role they play in mitigating the effects of climate change. When carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere over a large swath of forest, the forest acts sort of like a “sink”, that absorbs carbon dioxide and stores it as carbon in its biomass as it grows. That carbon is oxidized and is released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide when the forest is logged, burned, or decomposed. In the same way that burning fossil fuels creates greenhouse gases, so does burning organic matter. Cultivating the soil also releases carbon dioxide.

This fact is made more significant when we consider that 45% of the world’s terrestrial carbon is stored in forests.

“Carbon pools” is where exactly carbon is stored in forests. These are the leaves and trunks, the shrubs down below, the roots, ground litter, and the soil. For this reason, tropical forests hold more carbon than boreal and temperate forests. In fact, tropical deforestation contributes up to 18% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.

15% of all global greenhouse gas emissions come from forest degradation, deforestation, and land use change. This is more than the entire global transportation sector. Of that, degradation is responsible for 20% of all forest emissions. In the past decade, trends have shown that Brazil loses about 2,634 hectares of forest a year and Venezuela loses approximately 288 hectares of forest a year…

A successful REDD program must effectively address the causes of deforestation, produce measurable reductions in emissions and/or increases in sequestration, and maintain forest cover in the long term.

But preventing forest loss isn’t as easy as using a map, overlaying the history of a forest’s presence in a region, researching what caused deforestation/degradation and addressing those causes – especially when we consider that there are both underlying (social pressures, political, economic) and direct (logging) drivers of deforestation.

So we turn to an idea called Sustainable Forest Management, which the Food and Agriculture Organization defines as: the stewardship and use of forests and forest lands in a way, and at a rate, that maintains their biodiversity, productivity, regeneration capacity, vitality, and their potential to fulfill, now and in the future, relevant ecological, economic and social functions, at local, national, and global levels, and does not cause damage to other ecosystems (whew).

In simpler terms, the concept can be described as the attainment of a balance between society’s increasing demands for forest products and benefits and the preservation of the forest’s health and diversity. This can be undermined by the lack of a culture that promotes the preservation of forests and thoughtful resource use, as well as weak governance and organizational structures. First, you have to mind the stakeholders, who will have diverse, and sometimes competing, interests. There are stakeholders from the local, national, and even international level, and those at the local level feel the day-to-day impacts due to proximity (such as indigenous communities who rely on the forest for sustained living).

Here are some REDD program strategies, among any others:

• establishing and maintaining large protected areas
  • Category Ia — Strict Nature Reserve
  • Category Ib — Wilderness Area
  • Category II — National Park
  • Category III — Natural Monument or Feature
  • Category IV — Habitat/Species Management Area
  • Category V — Protected Landscape/Seascape
  • Category VI – Protected Area with sustainable use of natural resources
• employing reduced-impact logging practices (www.itto.int/feature15/)
  • a pre-harvest inventory and the mapping of individual crop trees;
  • the pre-harvesting planning of roads, skid trails and landings to minimise soil disturbance and to protect streams and waterways with appropriate crossings;
  • pre-harvest vine-cutting in areas where heavy vines connect tree crowns;
    the construction of roads, landings and skid trails following environmentally friendly design guidelines;
  • the use of appropriate felling and bucking techniques including directional felling, cutting stumps low to the ground to avoid waste, and the optimal crosscutting of tree stems into logs in a way that maximises the recovery of useful wood;
  • the winching of logs to planned skid trails and ensuring that skidding machines remain on the trails at all times;
  • where feasible, using yarding systems that protect soils and residual vegetation by suspending logs above the ground or by otherwise minimising soil disturbance; and
  • conducting a post-harvest assessment in order to provide feedback to the resource manager and logging crews and to evaluate the degree to which the RIL guidelines were successfully applied.
• intensifying agriculture production to reduce pressures on forests

• creating alternative livelihoods that do not require forest conversion
• simply planting native tree species!

Before any action is taken, a thorough analysis must first take place. A REDD program implementer first assesses the sources and volumes of current and expected emissions then identifies the policies, market conditions, and governance conditions surrounding the area. How will stakeholders be affected, and how likely are they to support program initiatives? What are the negative implications of such an intervention, and how feasible is the program’s success? It is also vital to define the activities and locations that offer the greatest potential for emissions reductions or carbon sequestrations in the long term. On a case-by-case basis, these strategic questions determine whether the program is appropriate.

The area’s reference emission level is also included in the analysis:
1. Using remote sensing data, collected from satellites, determine the amount of forestland that is currently destroyed/converted per year
2. Determine how much carbon, on average, is in the forests by establishing various sample plots throughout the forest and measuring the diameter (breast height) of each tree in the sample plot
3. Combine 1 and 2 to determine emission rates
4. Establish the REL (Reference Emission Level), which is the average historic rate of emissions that will represent the level of emissions that would have occurred without the presence of the REDD+ program.

What makes REDD different from traditional conservation efforts is that the impact must be measured in terms of carbon. Therefore, carbon accounting and MRV (monitoring, reporting, and verification) is a very important element of the REDD program.

Read more about REDD and REDD+ from the United Nations web platform here.

P.S. Since climate change is real, measurable, and largely influenced by people, we must do our part and show real and measurable results in our solutions. Perhaps the fight against climate change is no longer backed by our administration – but it will always be backed by honest science.