Ngo, DT, Le, AV, Le, HT et al. (12 more authors) (2020) The potential for REDD+ to reduce forest degradation in Vietnam. Environmental Research Letters, 15 (7). 074025. ISSN 1748-9326
Abstract
Natural forests in Vietnam have experienced rapid declines in the last 70 years, as a result of degradation from logging and conversion of natural forests to timber and rubber plantations. Degradation of natural forests leads to loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services, impacting the livelihoods of surrounding communities. Efforts to address ongoing loss of natural forests, through mechanisms such as Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+), require an understanding of the links between forest degradation and the livelihoods of local communities, which have rarely been studied in Vietnam. We combined information from livelihood surveys, remote sensing and forest inventories around a protected natural forest area in North Central Vietnam. For forest-adjacent communities, we found natural forests contributed an average of 28% of total household income with plantation forests contributing an additional 15%. Although officially prohibited, logging contributed more than half of the total income derived from natural forests. Analysis of Landsat images over the period 1990 to 2014 combined with forest inventory data, demonstrates selective logging was leading to ongoing degradation of natural forests resulting in loss of 3.3±0.8 Mg biomass ha-1 yr-1 across the protected area. This is equivalent to 1.5% yr-1 of total forest biomass, with rates as high as 3% yr-1 in degraded and easily accessible parts of the protected area. We estimate that preventing illegal logging would incur local opportunity costs of USD $4.10±0.90 per Mg CO2, similar to previous estimates for tropical forest protected areas and substantially less than the opportunity costs in timber or agricultural concessions. Our analysis suggests activities to reduce forest degradation in protected areas are likely to be financially viable through Vietnam's REDD+ program.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
---|---|
Authors/Creators: |
|
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2020 The Author(s). This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | forest degradation, REDD+, livelihoods |
Dates: |
|
Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Inst for Climate & Atmos Science (ICAS) (Leeds) The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Geography (Leeds) > Ecology & Global Change (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 23 Jun 2020 10:32 |
Last Modified: | 21 May 2024 12:53 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | IOP Publishing |
Identification Number: | 10.1088/1748-9326/ab905a |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:162171 |