The Rimba Raya Biodiversity Reserve REDD Project

to recovery from past disturbance, and so monitoringproject GHG removals by vegetation can beconservatively neglected if desired.J. The volume of trees extracted for lumber per hectareprior to land conversion is assumed to be equivalent tothe total volume (or biomass) of all trees above theminimum size class sold in the local timber market.Baseline CO 2 e emissions from planned palm oil concessionsOverview of calculations. The Rimba Raya project follows themethodology developed for the Mawas Conservation Project inCentral Kalimantan titled “Baseline methodology forconservation projects that prevent or reduce anthropogenically-­inducedfire in peat swamp forests, Version 5.1, December2009” Baseline CO 2 e emissions are estimated in this report basedon the best available data which include site-­‐specific data,Mawas data and peer-­‐reviewed science.The baseline methodology outlines three main steps forestimating baseline net avoided GHG emissions:(1) Stratification and sampling;(2) Estimation of GHG emissions from changes inaboveground biomass; and(3) Estimation of GHG emissions from peat.Stratification of the project area into land cover strata isexplained in Section G2.1. Calculations for estimating the area ofconversion and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from changes inaboveground biomass and emissions from peat are summarizedand presented in the tables below, followed by summary tablesshowing total emissions avoided over a 30-­‐year life-­‐of-­‐projectscenario. Baseline calculations for the first ten years were thefocus of the analysis. These are estimates only; in the projectscenario the baseline will need to be re-­‐assessed every ten yearsto incorporate new data sources, policy changes, etc., and thusminimal attention should be given to the baseline estimatesbeyond the 10 year window.Calculating emissions from aboveground biomass involves fourcomponents: (1) emissions from timber; (2) emission fromburning remaining aboveground biomass; (3) sequestration byreplacement vegetation (palm oil); and (4) emissions fromharvest rotations. As palm oil plantations operate on a 25-­‐30year timeframe, emissions from harvest rotations were notconsidered in this analysis.Calculating emissions from peat involves two components: (1)emissions from drainage and (2) emissions from burning for sitepreparation.Calculations are summarized below. For full calculations,please see the Baseline Report and Methodology.Project start dateInfiniteEARTH dates the start of project actitives from November,2008, which is when a letter from the Bupati of the SeruyanDistrict was signed recommending that the Rimba RayaConcession be awarded to RT Rimba Raya (see Figure 42 in s.G5.1.) and when Infinite-­‐Earth began officially funding operationsfor conservation efforts in the project area. From this pointforward, the remaining four palm oil concessions no longer hadthe authority to commence operations.108