Chapter 13 Reversing Global Deforestation and Forest Degradation

Discussion Questions

1. Protecting forests in one nation may displace logging to a different country. How can this problem be addressed?
2. How might tree plantations be made more beneficial to biodiversity? What might be some downsides or costs associated with these suggestions?
3. Develop a flowchart that summarizes the major feedbacks among logging, deforestation, and climate. Be sure to include the effects of road building and habitat fragmentation.
4. This chapter offers several positive directions for the future of forest conservation. These include developing alternative fuels and building materials, designing plans to guide extractive activities to forest areas of lowest conservation value, establishing a payments for ecosystem services program to reward landowners who protect their forested lands, and ensuring certification of sustainable timber. Of these options, which do you think provides the best hope for global forest conservation, and which do you think will have the least overall impact? Be sure to justify your answers.
5. Read the papers by Putz and colleagues (2012) and Zimmerman and Kormos (2012). Contrast the types of evidence and argument these two groups use to support their views regarding the fate of biodiversity in logged forests. Discuss the quality of evidence and explain what you find most persuasive.

Group Projects

• Identify five nations in which payments for ecosystem services (PES; introduced in Chapter 3) are directed to forest protection projects. For each country, evaluate the impact of the PES program on biodiversity protection and economic activity. A good place to start is with the Forest Trends website.
  
  
• Find a set of three developing countries whose economic conditions and poverty rates are fairly similar, but whose recent rates of forest loss differ as much as possible. Data on economic conditions can be found at the Population Reference Bureau website. Information about forest loss is available in the latest United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) “State of the World’s Forests” report. Do some further research to try to explain why these three countries might be experiencing different rates of forest loss despite similar economic development.
  
  
• Unilever, the world's third-largest consumer goods company, has made a commitment to sustainable sourcing, including a commitment to zero deforestation. Since palm oil is in many of their products, this might be challenging. Research the Unilever case study and address the following questions: How and why did this commitment come about? Do you think it is good for Unilever's business, and why or why not? Does the commitment set concrete quantifiable and measurable goals? What are the challenges of verifying that Unilever's supply chain truly does not cause any deforestation? Do you think Unilever's commitment could make any real difference on the global scale? There is a lot of information about Unilever's commitment—but a good place to start is the company's own website, as well as articles about its CEO, Paul Polman.
  
  
• Using the data available as supplemental material to Putz et al. (2012), explore what attributes, geographies, or situations are associated with the best and the worst logging practices in terms of impacts on biodiversity or carbon storage. In other words, use the data to recommend which areas or attributes to avoid and which to favor if the goal is to minimize the impacts of logging.
  
  

Useful Websites

• Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Forestry is the division of the United Nations tasked with tracking global forest resources and providing resources for sustainable forest management. Their website provides the "State of the World's Forests" reports and software to support forest monitoring and assessment. http://www.fao.org/forestry/en/


• Forest Stewardship Council has developed international standards for responsible forest management and accredits organizations to certify forest managers and producers of forest products who meet FSC standards. https://us.fsc.org/


• Forest Trends is a non-profit organization that promotes sustainable forest management and conservation. It does this by helping to accelerate the development of economic systems in which commerce sustains ecosystem services and companies that manage forest ecosystems in a sustainable fashion receive market recognition. http://www.forest-trends.org


• LANDFIRE is a USGS portal providing data and detailed maps of U.S. vegetation and fire regimes. http://landfire.cr.usgs.gov


• Population Reference Bureau provides a wealth of information, data, and charts regarding the human population, health, and environment. Data can be searched by nation or region. http://www.prb.org


• Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification is an umbrella organization that certifies national programs for sustainable forest management. http://www.pefc.org


• Sustainable Forestry Initiative is the largest certifier of sustainable forest products in North America. http://www.sfiprogram.org

Suggested Readings for In-class Discussion

• Bowler DE, Buyung-Ali LM, Healey JR, Jones JP, Knight TM, Pullin AS (2011) Does community forest management provide global environmental benefits and improve local welfare? Front Ecol Environ 10: 29-36.
  
  
• Lambin EF, Meyfroidt P (2011) Global land use change, economic globalization, and the looming land scarcity. PNAS 108: 3465-3472.http://www.pnas.org/content/108/9/3465.short (open access)
  
  
• Nepstad D, McGrath D, Stickler C, Alencar A, Azevedo A, et al. (2014) Slowing Amazon deforestation through public policy and interventions in beef and soy supply chains. Science 344: 1118-1123.
  
  
• Putz FE, Zuidema PA, Synnott T, Peña-Claros M, Pinard MA, et al. (2012) Sustaining conservation values in selectively logged tropical forests: The attained and the attainable. Conserv Lett 5: 296-303.
  
  
• Strassburg BB, Rodrigues AS, Gusti M, Balmford A, Fritz S, et al. (2012) Impacts of incentives to reduce emissions from deforestation on global species extinctions. Nat Clim Change 2: 350-355.
  
  
• Zimmerman BL, Kormos CF (2012) Prospects for sustainable logging in tropical forests. Bioscience 62: 479-487. http://bioscience.oxfordjournals.org/content/62/5/479.short (open access)