Climate Action 2014-2015

DEFORESTATION AND REDD+
THE COSTA RICAN EXAMPLE
One good example of the restoration
phenomenon is Costa Rica, which has
built its economy by rebuilding its forests.
In 1943, forests covered 3.9 million
hectares, 77 per cent of the country’s
land area. By 1986, forests had contracted
to just over 2 million hectares or 40.7
per cent, mostly owing to expanding
agriculture and cattle grazing. With the
forests gone, denuded hillsides threatened
to accelerate sedimentation of hydropower
reservoirs in a country where hydropower
accounted for 80 per cent of electricity.
From 1986 onwards, however, Costa Rica
has pursued forest restoration through a
combination of natural regeneration on
abandoned pastures and active tree planting.
By 2005, forest area had increased by 2.4
million hectares to cover 48 per cent of
the country, helping the establishment of
nature-based tourism, a defining trait of the
Costa Rican economy today.
AFRICAN SUCCESSES
Successes in several African countries
demonstrate how effective landscape
restoration can be.
In southern Niger, an agroforestry
practice called ‘farmer-managed natural
regeneration’ has encouraged residents to
let native trees and shrubs regrow from
underground root systems that survived
earlier cutting, or plant new trees amid
crop fields. These woody plants have
improved soil conditions, fertilising the
surrounding ground and boosting crop
yields, helping to bring this region back
from the edge of desertification that
threatened the area from the late 1960s
through the 1980s.
Since 1985, more than a million rural
households in Niger have protected
and managed trees across approximately
5 million hectares, increasing food
security and the amount and diversity of
household incomes. In many cases, cereal
yields per hectare doubled, with farmers
producing 500,000 more tons of cereal
per year than in the 1970s and 1980s,
bringing greater food security to 2.5
million people. The new trees also buffer
climate extremes that can affect crops.
Households that adopted farmermanaged
natural regeneration had gross
per capita income of US$167, compared
to $122 for non-adopters. Extrapolating
across the whole 5 million hectares
in southern Niger means aggregate
income benefits could reach $900
million annually.
This kind of farmer engagement has
also proved effective in Ethiopia and
Tanzania, where both countries built
on existing natural infrastructure and
traditional practice to bring back
landscapes that had been ravaged by
deforestation-induced drought.
In some of the cases in African countries,
there were snags. For example, in
Ethiopia, even as farmers saw improved
yields and the return of native plants,
they did not find the financial rewards
they expected from the purchase of
carbon sequestration credits. Involving
many stakeholders in the process proved
complicated and expensive. However,
that very involvement was essential to
making it work.
‘GRAIN FOR GREEN’ ON
CHINA’S LOESS PLATEAU
China used a different method to restore
700,000 hectares of land in its Loess
Plateau, south-west of Beijing. A massive
World Bank-funded replanting effort from
1999 to 2005 was aimed at improving
degraded soils and vegetation, spurring
food production and cleansing polluted
waterways and air quality in distant cities.
China’s ‘Grain for Green’ programme
offered a payment for ecosystem services
that engaged millions of rural households.
As a result, more than 2.5 million people
were lifted out of poverty, food supplies
were secured, new land management
practices yielded a 159 per cent increase
in income over nine years in one
watershed, and nearly 90,000 hectares of
new farmland was created by terracing,
according to World Bank figures.
However, the benefits of restoration
were not well understood by the local
population, possibly because of the
top-down nature of the project. The
technical design came under scrutiny as
well, in part because of questions about
whether planting trees across this arid
plateau could be sustained, especially as
the region’s climate entered a warming,
drying period.
GETTING PAST THE
RESTORATION TIPPING
POINT
In each of these successful cases, political
mobilisation has helped make the idea of
landscape restoration a working policy,
while local engagement and followthrough
were key elements in putting it
into practice.
The best estimates suggest deforestation
is responsible for between 12 and 20 per
cent of global emissions. That significant
percentage of emissions could be
reduced by practices that also quickly
improve the lives of the people working
and living in the restored landscapes.
Government, business and local
stakeholders can act in their own selfinterest
to push past the restoration
tipping point to make it a global reality.
Dr Andrew Steer is the President and
CEO of the World Resources Institute
(WRI). He joined WRI from the World
Bank, where he served as Special Envoy for
Climate Change from 2010 - 2012. From
2007 to 2010 he served as Director General
at the UK Department of International
Development (DFID) in London. Dr Steer
serves on the Executive Board of the UN
Secretary-General’s Sustainable Energy For
All initiative and is Co-Chair of the World
Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council
on Natural Capital. He was a long-time
resident in South-east Asia, where he directed
World Bank operations in Vietnam and
Indonesia. He has a PhD in Economics,
and has written widely on sustainable
development issues.
World Resources Institute (WRI) is a
global research organisation that spans more
than 50 countries, with offices in the Brazil,
China, Europe, India, Indonesia, and the
United States. Our more than 450 experts
and staff work closely with leaders to turn
big ideas into action to sustain our natural
resources—the foundation of economic
opportunity and human well-being
(www.wri.org)
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