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16 May, 2012

MSD Platform Successfully Established in Two New Districts

The EU chainsaw milling project has expanded its multi-stakeholder dialogue (MSD) platform to two new forest districts: Tarkwa and Nkwanta.

15 May, 2012

TBI Viet Nam holds a successful final phase two workshop

TBI Viet Nam held its final workshop of phase two on April 17th, 2012 in Hue, Viet Nam. The overall objective of the workshop was to evaluate the obtained results compiled by TBI Viet Nam, and to introduce the programme’s orientation thru 2016.

15 May, 2012

Workshop to assess the policy and practice of Forest Land Allocation held in Ha Noi

On April 10th, 2012, TBI Viet Nam, with support from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD), conducted a workshop in Ha Noi entitled, “Forestry Land Allocation: Policy and Practice.” The event was held in cooperation with the Department of Science, Technology and Environment (under MARD) and the Institute of Forest Planning and Inventory (FIPI).

Quantifying socio-environmental risks of road infrastructure investments in Suriname by modelling deforestation dynamics.

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Suriname -

Tropical deforestation is a complicated process associated with multifarious problems ranging from technical to policy-related issues. A correlated pathway can explain the causes of tropical deforestation: occupation of forest areas is triggered by immigration to forest lands prompted by government decisions, such as road infrastructure projects, all of them with spin-off consequence of spontaneous colonization.

Road infrastructure investments in the hinterlands, namely pavement of the roads to Afobaka and Atjoni, can have significant impacts on the forest in the districts of Para, Brokopondo and Sipaliwini. Plans to continue road development southwards may become effective and can trigger significant socio-environmental risks. Among the major risks of new accesses to core areas of the forest are: increased poaching and wildlife trade, forest fragmentation and forest degradation promoted by unsustainable mining and unsustainable timber logging practices. Moreover, road infrastructure can hamper the preservation of indigenous traditions and customs.

The long term reduction of the environmental risks and its substantial costs to the country are most feasible if the risk is quantified and the spatial location of threats and consequences are predicted. In that way decision makers and investors can make beter informed decisions considering mitigation, correction and sound conservation measures. The overarching aim of this study was to predict short and long term deforestation driven by proximate and cumulative impacts of roads by combining remote sensing, GIS and spatial explicit modeling.

The outcome of this research is to demonstrate the potential of this type of studies to visualize the effects of land-use decisions on forest conservation along future infrastructure developments. This may result in minimizing undue negative impacts on forest-dependent people and forests. Further usefulness will be in preparation for REDD+ and other CO₂ compensation systems as well as spatial planning including the designation of forest exploitation and conservation areas.

Likewise, the outcomes of the project will provide information on the location of key impact areas that require focal attention and sound planning with regards to environmental integrity and sustainability.

Objective

To cross spatial analysis and socio-economic data in order to understand and predict deforestation processes in the influence area of the Afobaka road and the road to Atjoni including a stretch of the Upper Suriname River.