Global Environmental Change 19 (2009) 400401

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Global Environmental Change

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Editorial

Dangers of carbon-based conservation

In recognition of the substantial releases of greenhouse gases due to land-use changes in the tropics, during the second commitment period of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC; 20122022), developing countries are likely to be credited for reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD). Continued crediting for afforestation and reforestation is also likely as Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs). Under a variety of conditions, preventing deforestation and encouraging forests to recover vegetation and soil carbon stocks where they have been diminished can reduce net emissions of greenhouse gases, contribute to local livelihoods, and foster biodiversity protection. It also appears that the great mitigation potential of improved forest management (REDD+) can be realized at small nancial costs and with large co-benets including improved worker safety and the maintenance of ecosystem functions (Putz et al., 2008; Sasaki and Putz, 2009). Some caution is nevertheless warranted because there are conditions under which carbon-based conservation can be bad for biodiversity. Our concerns about carbon-based conservation are underlain by the fact that because most terrestrial biomass carbon is in trees, silvicultural interventions that promote tree growth simultaneously promote carbon sequestration. This means that the sorts of forest improvement treatments that foresters have long advocated for timber production are entirely appropriate for increasing forest-wide rates of carbon uptake. It unfortunately also means that efforts at maximizing forest carbon stocks share the same practical and philosophical limitations of striving to maximize timber yields (Ludwig et al., 1993). And while there are many parallels between the forest carbon debate and the wellpublicized biofuel controversy (e.g., Koh and Ghazoul, 2008), carbon-based conservation has received less scrutiny partially because it involves protecting forests and planting trees, activities that most people endorse. To start on a positive note, protecting mature forests from degradation or destruction is an effective way to both reduce net emissions of greenhouse gases and to protect biodiversity (Venter et al., 2009). While mature forests have relatively low incremental rates of net carbon uptake, with any positive time value of carbon (i.e., if the value of carbon sequestered in the future is discounted relative to the present), it never makes carbon-sense to allow any sort of anthropogenic disturbances (Harmon et al., 1990; Fargione et al., 2008). It follows that REDD funds should be used to expand and more effectively manage protected areas that contain mature forest, with appropriate safeguards for local use and compensation for lost access.

Our concerns about carbon-based conservation relate to management interventions applied to increase carbon stocks. Conicts between carbon sequestration and biodiversity conservation certainly loom large when forests are actively managed for carbon, and escalate as management intensies. In particular, maximizing rates of carbon sequestration leads to potentially perverse conservation outcomes when silvicultural interventions that are good for timber and carbon are detrimental to biodiversity. If these silvicultural treatments are applied lightly, such as when only scattered future crop trees (i.e., trees of commercial species that are less than the minimum harvestable size) are liberated from smothering blankets of woody vines (lianas), then the biodiversity impacts are also likely to be light. In contrast, intensive forest improvement treatments are designed to have severe impacts on forest structure and composition. At the extreme, in forests where carbon stocks are the focus, non-arboreal plant lifeforms (e.g., lianas, hemiepiphytes, and shrubs) and tree species that do not grow to be large will be selected against. This privileging of trees and of forests, the so-called arborealization on the conservation agenda (Walker, 2005), also puts naturally non-forested ecosystems at risk, as discussed below. And as for animals, other than the few species required for pollination and seed dispersal, most vertebrates and invertebrates are superuous if not nuisances in forests managed for carbon. Clearly, in the absence of regulatory constraints, where maximization of carbon yields is the sole goal of forest management, then the selected intensity of carbon farming will be determined by carbon market prices, often at the cost of biodiversity. Perhaps the most insidious and persistent threat to forest biodiversity results from confounding plantations with forests. Although the forest-plantation distinction is sometimes blurred, such as where native tree species are planted, the two land uses nevertheless need to be differentiated lest many of the values of forests, biodiversity in particular, be lost with no change in forest cover (Putz and Redford, in press). Admittedly, when plantations are established in an appropriate manner on abandoned or marginal land, they can benet biodiversity while sequestering substantial amounts of carbon and enhancing social welfare. That said, it is important to note that some portion of what carbonoffset brokers, well-meaning environmentalists, and other outsiders see as abandoned land may contribute substantially to the well-being of local people (e.g., Dove, 1983). Furthermore, the familiar and reasonable sounding idea that plantations take pressure off natural forests, the so-called New Zealand Solution, seldom seems realistic for areas suffering from poverty and weak governance.

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The synergy between forest protection for carbon and biodiversity does not extend easily to naturally low carbon-density ecosystems, such as savannas and woodlands (Nelson et al., 2008). It is of particular concern that under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) there are funds for afforestation, i.e., the process of planting trees in areas that have not supported forest since before 1940, including species-rich natural grasslands and savannas (Putz and Redford, in press). If these areas are planted with trees, or if carbon stocks are enhanced by re suppression or removal of the grazers and browsers that historically prevented tree encroachment, then the biodiversity losses will be staggering. Fortunately for these low carbon density ecosystems, the CDM is so cumbersome that very few projects have successfully secured approval (Locatelli et al., 2008), but these impediments could be removed during the next commitment period. Given that tropical savannas and other opencanopied ecosystems are in as much jeopardy as closed-canopy forests, the enthusiasm for tree planting among carbon investors (Neeff et al., 2009) could create perverse incentives leading to major biodiversity losses from areas that fall on the wrong side of the forest-not forest dichotomy. Many UNFCCC negotiators recognize the social and environmental pitfalls associated with commodication of biomass carbon but worry about burdening the new agreement with too many regulations tangential to its climate change mitigation goals. Some assurance will derive from linking carbon project design to the standards of the Climate, Community and Biodiversity Alliance (http://www.climate-standards.org) or legislative imperatives that require carbon trading regimes to maintain ecological integrity. But for projects that involve forest management, it makes sense to take advantage of the many years of experience of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) or other credible third-party certication programs (Subak, 2002). In any case, mechanisms need to be installed to avoid the negative biodiversity consequences of valuing forests and other natural ecosystems only or primarily for their climate mitigation potential. References
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F.E. Putz* Department of Biology, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA K.H. Redford WCS Institute, Wildlife Conservation Society, 2300 Southern Blvd., Bronx, NY 10460, USA *Corresponding author E-mail addresses: fep@u.edu (F.E. Putz) kredford@wcs.org (K.H. Redford) 2 July 2009