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Context and challenges

Developing sustainable forms of forestry management can be an important tool to mitigate climate change and adapt to its impacts on forests. When managed in a sustainable way, forests have an important role to play as stores of carbon, but often their exploitation leads to them being net emitters and being vulnerable to climate change. The IPCC has also identified a number of ways in which mitigation and adaptation activities may interact when it comes to forest management – increasing carbon density may, for instance, change the vulnerability of the forest to temperature or rainfall.

Ensuring the sustainable management of privately managed forests typically requires some form of regulation, since doing so is unlikely to be in the short-term economic interests of the private company. States clearly have a role to play in such regulation, but since climate change has global costs, international regulatory standards may also be necessary. Yet the impacts of such standards, and more generally the conditions that lead to high quality forest management, are uncertain.

Goals

This exploratory project will produce maps of road creation within forestry concessions, a key indicator of the way that forests are managed. The project will scale up research which has demonstrated the potential to measure road construction using radar data, which has the advantage of being useable in areas with cloud cover.  This scaled up product will then be used by economists in the team to analyse the impact of international private certification schemes.  Such schemes have the potential to complement national regulation both by harmonizing across countries and providing an alternative enforcement mechanism.  Their effectiveness is disputed, however, with some claiming that they are unable to incentivize forest managers to undertake actions that could damage profitability. Analysing their impact on roads is therefore a crucial step in understanding their effects.

INRAE units involved

• PjSE – Ile-de-France
• ISPA - Bordeaux

External partners : IRD