WRI Publications Feed: People & Ecosystems

Banking on Nature's Assets: How Multilateral Development Banks Can Strengthen Development by Using Ecosystem Services

Maggie Barron — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:57:27 -0500

Humanity depends on nature for physical and spiritual sustenance, livelihoods, and survival. Ecosystems provide numerous benefits or “ecosystem services” that underpin economic development and support human well-being. They include provisioning services such as food, freshwater, and fuel as well as an array of regulating services such as water purification, pollination, and climate regulation. Healthy ecosystems are a prerequisite to sustaining economic development and mitigating and adapting to climate change.

The UN-led Millennium Ecosystem Assessment audited the health of 24 ecosystem services globally and reported that two-thirds had been degraded over the past half century. This degradation is undermining development progress. However, by accounting for and managing ecosystem service trade-offs, multilateral development banks (MDBs) and partner countries can improve development outcomes, help address climate change, and reduce costs to people and economies. Toward this end, a growing number of tools are emerging to help factor ecosystem services into economic development decisions.

Traditionally, development planners have focused narrowly on provisioning services with a value in the market place while overlooking regulating services. Expansion of aquacultures has increased shrimp production, for example, but at the same time degraded the fish spawning ground and storm protection services provided by mangroves. Construction of dams has increased power and freshwater for irrigation while leading to downstream loss of wetlands and their purification and flood protection services.

MDBs have already begun to experiment with ecosystem service concepts in development planning and practice. This report makes the case for expanding beyond the current focus on single services and “add-on” projects. The authors recommend a more systematic approach, one that would take into account multiple ecosystem services in all development operations from the earliest stages of the planning process. Such an approach will enable MDBs to make the links among climate, environment, and development and identify risks and opportunities associated with development plans. Banking on Nature’s Assets identifies entry points for mainstreaming ecosystem services in MDBs’ core operations of strategic direction setting, advisory services, and investments and describes a portfolio of tools to help. It also presents a range of policy options that MDBs can help country partners implement to sustain critical ecosystem services.

The report concludes with five interrelated recommendations to scale up MDB and partner-country application of ecosystem services:

Incorporate into environment strategies;
Integrate into core operations;
Build capacity to implement an ecosystem services approach;
Empower local authorities, organizations, and communities; and
Strengthen policies and incentives.

Entry Points for Integrating Ecosystems Services into MDB Operations

Mapping a Healthier Future: How Spatial Analysis Can Guide Pro-Poor Water and Sanitation Planning in Uganda

admin — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 09:52:09 -0400

Improving water supply, sanitation, and hygiene is central to Uganda’s successful development. Such measures would affect all Ugandans and are important to every sector of the economy, but they are particularly relevant to the poor. The availability of safe drinking water, adequate sanitation, and basic hygiene can improve health, lower mortality rates, and increase work and educational achievements. In particular, better sanitation and handwashing are among the most effective means to reduce morbidity and mortality from diarrheal diseases, which disproportionately affect the poor.

The central role of safe water and sanitation in addressing poverty in Uganda is reflected in national policy. The national framework for poverty eradication highlights the links between water, sanitation, and poverty reduction efforts. To implement the plans and policies related to safe drinking water coverage, Uganda’s policy-makers have established ambitious targets for 2015. As a result, the government and development partners have made large investments in the water sector, and signifi cant pro-poor benefi ts have been achieved. However, much work still remains to be done in order to ensure safe drinking water access and basic sanitation across Uganda.

One of the premises of the current report is that assuring future pro-poor benefits from water and sanitation investments will require more detailed poverty information. This is where maps such as those introduced in this publication can be helpful to decision-makers. Detailed information on the location of poor communities can help decisionmakers target these vulnerable areas for investment, thereby improving health while keeping implementation costs reasonable.

One of the principal challenges in planning and implementing effective pro-poor interventions in water and sanitation is coordinating multiple actors across many sectors and using many different data sets. This report offers new tools to meet this challenge. Examining subcounties in Uganda that have fallen behind in reaching 2015 targets, the report illustrates how integrating various spatial and demographic data on poverty, water, and sanitation can strengthen efforts to promote health. Stand-alone water supply interventions have less impact on health outcomes than well-coordinated interventions that improve water supply, sanitation infrastructure, and hygiene behavior simultaneously.

The unique information presented in this report is critical to achieving greater results and identifying additional pro-poor interventions to reach Uganda’s 2015 national targets. To this end, the authors identify the types of analyses available to Ugandan stakeholders, in order to encourage readers to develop their own poverty, water, and sanitation maps.

Audience and Aims

This report is intended for technical and high-level officers working both on poverty issues and in health and water departments at national and local levels.

For decision-makers concerned with reducing poverty, the report demonstrates how comparing levels of poverty in a location with maps of access to safe drinking water, enhanced sanitation facilities, hygiene behavior, and other environmental health indicators can inform strategies to fight poverty.
For decision-makers in the water and health sector, the publication shows how information on the location and severity of poverty can assist in setting priorities for interventions and how to integrate data sets about water supply, sanitation infrastructure, and hygiene behavior to support coordinated interventions.

Report Overview

Mapping a Healthier Future: How Spatial Analysis Can Guide Pro-Poor Water and Sanitation Planning in Uganda presents maps and analyses designed to inform the policies surrounding poverty reduction efforts in Uganda and to help reach the 2015 national targets on safe drinking water and improved sanitation.
Introduction: gives an overview of the links between water issues and poverty and sets the Ugandan policy context for pro-poor water and sanitation interventions.
Safe Drinking Water Coverage and Poverty: provides an overview of the national pattern of safe drinking water coverage; introduces a series of maps linking this subject to poverty rates to illustrate how poverty maps can inform future investments in safe drinking water infrastructure in order to make them more pro-poor.
Improved Sanitation, Hygiene, and Poverty: takes an in-depth look at policies and concerns surrounding sanitation and hygiene. Maps are included showing location-specific indicators of sanitation and hygiene coverage and poverty to help guide the discussion on resource allocation. Conclusions and Recommendations: summarizes observations from the map analyses and proposes recommendations for decision-makers regarding poverty reduction and water supply, sanitation, and hygiene in Uganda and in other developing countries.

Key Findings and Recommendations

Findings

While the maps and analyses discussed in this report are primarily illustrative in nature, they support the following conclusions:

Poverty maps and maps of water and sanitation indicators can provide insight into the relationship between poverty, water, and sanitation;
Maps showing water and sanitation indicators at the subcounty level can be used by planners to identify disadvantaged areas and examine equity issues;
Combining map-based census data related to water, sanitation, and hygiene can guide more integrated campaigns to decrease the incidence of water-borne diseases; and
The type of analysis presented in this report is most useful for identifying subcounties with similar poverty, water, and sanitation characteristics in order to guide geographic targeting.

Recommendations

Strengthening the supply of high-quality data and analytical capacity can improve future planning and prioritization of water, sanitation, and poverty reduction efforts. Priority actions for policy-makers include:

Fill data gaps on sanitation and hygiene indicators; regularly update water, sanitation, and hygiene data; and continue supply of poverty data for small administrative areas; and
Strengthen data integration, mapping, and analysis. Promoting the demand for such indicators and spatial analyses will require leadership from several government agencies. The following actions will help link relevant maps and analyses with specific decision-making opportunities:
Incorporate poverty information into water, sanitation, and hygiene interventions and in regular performance reporting for the water and sanitation sector;
Incorporate water, sanitation, and hygiene behavior information into poverty reduction efforts;
Promote more integrated planning and implementation of water, sanitation, and hygiene interventions; and
Incorporate poverty maps and maps of water, sanitation, and hygiene indicators into local decision-making.

Eutrophication: Policies, Action, and Strategies to Address Nutrient Pollution

Maggie Barron — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 14:58:51 -0400

Nutrient overenrichment of freshwater and coastal ecosystems—or eutrophication—is a rapidly growing environmental crisis. Worldwide, the number of coastal areas impacted by eutrophication stands at over 500. In coastal areas, occurrences of dead zones, which are caused by eutrophic conditions, have increased from 10 documented cases in 1960 to 405 documented cases in 2008. In addition, many of the world’s freshwater lakes, streams, and reservoirs suffer from eutrophication; in the United States, eutrophication is considered the primary cause of freshwater impairment.

In order to reverse eutrophication trends and mitigate nutrient losses to aquatic ecosystems, policymakers should:

Implement research and monitoring programs to characterize the effects of eutrophication, collect water quality data, and inform adaptive management strategies. Information is a key element in the development of robust strategies to reduce eutrophication.
Raise awareness of eutrophication. Eutrophication and its effects are not well understood by the public or policymakers. Public awareness campaigns, school environmental education programs, and targeted outreach and technical assistance are all important components of raising the profile of eutrophication within communities and building a foundation and support for effective actions to reduce nutrient losses and eutrophication.
Implement regulations to mitigate nutrient losses, such as standards, technology requirements, or pollution caps for various sectors.
Create fiscal and economic incentives to encourage nutrient reducing actions using taxes and fees, subsidies, or environmental markets.
Preserve and restore natural ecosystems that capture and cycle nutrients.
Establish strong, engaged, and coordinated institutions to address eutrophication. Effective institutions to implement and enforce policies are important to the success of any eutrophication strategy, especially where multiple jurisdictions are involved.
Capitalize on environmental synergies when designing comprehensive policies to address eutrophication. Many policies and activities associated with reducing nutrient pollution have synergies with other environmental problems such as climate change, smog, and acid rain. Policies selected and implemented should seek to maximize environmental benefits.

Additional Links

This policy note is third in a series. Click below to read the other two:

Measuring Nature’s Benefits: A Preliminary Roadmap for Improving Ecosystem Service Indicators

Tim Herzog — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 14:35:00 -0400

Ecosystem services are the benefits that people derive from nature. Some benefits, such as crops, fish, and freshwater (provisioning services), are tangible. Others such as pollination, erosion regulation, climate regulation (regulating services) and aesthetic and spiritual fulfillment (cultural services) are less tangible. All, however, directly or indirectly underpin human economies and livelihoods.

Despite their critical importance, the capacity of ecosystems to provide these myriad services are being degraded at an alarming rate. In 2005 the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA), a four-year study of the state of the world’s ecosystems involving more than 1,300 experts from 95 countries, reported that over 60 percent of ecosystem services were already degraded. This negative trend, they concluded, was set to continue at an accelerating pace over the next half century.

The ecosystem services conceptual framework provided by the MA has proven effective for communicating how ecosystems underlie human well-being. Early efforts to apply ecosystem services concepts and information have strengthened both public and private sector development strategies and improved environmental outcomes.

However, mainstreaming ecosystem services concepts more broadly will require information designed for policy-makers, including data, decision support tools, and “indicators”—information that condenses complexity to a manageable level and informs decisions and actions (Bossel, 1999). Knowing where indicators and data are already sufficient to inform policy-makers’ understanding of ecosystem services, and where they fall short, will help inform such mainstreaming efforts in international and national arenas. This paper compiles and assesses current ecosystems services indicators in order to inform and advance such efforts.

Key Findings

The analysis found significant limitations in the capacity of the indicators assessed to support policy-makers’ use of ecosystem service concepts, specifically:

The ability of indicators to convey information about ecosystem services is low overall, although it varies widely among services;
The indicators available for most ecosystem services are not comprehensive and are often inadequate to characterize the diversity and complexity of the benefits they provide;
Data are often insufficient to support the use of these indicators; and
Indicators for regulating and cultural services lag behind provisioning services in each of the limitations identified above.

Eutrophication: Sources and Drivers of Nutrient Pollution

Tim Herzog — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0400

Nutrient over-enrichment of freshwater and coastal ecosystems, or eutrophication, is a rapidly growing environmental crisis. Worldwide, the number of coastal areas impacted by eutrophication stands at over 500. In coastal areas, occurrences of dead zones, which are caused by eutrophic conditions, have increased from 10 documented cases in 1960 to 405 documented cases in 2008. In addition, many of the world’s freshwater lakes, streams, and reservoirs suffer from eutrophication; in the United States, eutrophication is thought to be the primary cause of freshwater impairment. Many of our largest freshwater lakes are entrophic, including Lake Erie (United States), Lake Victoria (Tanzania/Uganda/Kenya), and Tai Lake (China).

The increase in eutrophication is the result of human activities. Major sources of nutrients to freshwater and coastal ecosystems include wastewater, agriculture, and atmospheric deposition of nitrogen from burning fossil fuels. The drivers of eutrophication are expected to increase for the foreseeable future. Specifically:

World population will continue to grow, reaching an estimated 9.2 billion by 2050, which will increase pressures on the productive capacity of agriculture and industry.
Intensive agriculture and land use conversion—for crops, livestock, and aquaculture—will increase, especially in the developing world. In addition to population growth, intensifi cation is driven by changing dietary patterns. For example, over the period from 2002 to 2030, global meat consumption is expected to increase by 54 percent.
Energy consumption is expected to grow 50 percent from 2005 to 2030. Fossil fuels, which release nitrogen oxides (NOx) into the environment when burned, will continue to be the dominant fuel source in this century.

As a result of these increasing global trends in population growth, energy use, and agricultural production, we expect that coastal and freshwater systems impacted by eutrophication and hypoxia will continue to increase, especially in the developing world.

Sustainable Procurement of Wood and Paper-Based Products: Version 1.1

Ruth Nogueron — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 15:41:45 -0400

Find out more at http://www.sustainableforestprods.org

Version 1.1 includes a characterization of 34 tools and resources (13 more than in the original publication) that aid sustainable procurement of forest products. The update also includes a comprehensive list of publicly available private sector procurement policies and the issues they cover.

Decisions regarding the purchase and use of wood and paper-based products can have far-reaching, long-term impacts for the forests where they are harvested, the communities supported by wood-using industries, and the places where those products are purchased and used.

The information in this joint WRI/WBCSD publication is organized around ten key issues, posed as “essential questions” that procurement managers might address related to the sustainable procurement of wood and paper-based products:

Origin: Where do the products come from?
Information accuracy: Is information about the products credible?
Legality: Have the products been legally produced?
Sustainability: Have forests been sustainably managed?
Special places: Have special places, including sensitive ecosystems, been protected?
Climate change: Have climate issues been addressed?
Environmental protection: Have appropriate environmental controls been applied?
Recycled fiber: Has recycled fiber been used appropriately?
Other resources: Have other resources been used appropriately?
Local communities and indigenous peoples: Have the needs of local communities or indigenous peoples been addressed?

The publication is designed as an information tool to help customers develop their own sustainable procurement policies for wood and paper-based products. It is also a decision support tool providing simple and clear information on twenty-two existing approaches to the procurement of wood and paper-based products from legal and sustainable sources, as well as providing additional references and resource materials.

Interactive Forest Atlas for Gabon (Atlas Forestier Interactif du Gabon)

Scott Thompson — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 11:52:09 -0400

On This Page/À Cette Page

Summary (English)
Résumé (Français)

Summary

The Interactive Forest Atlas for Gabon is both an information management tool, as well as an aide to decision makers towards supporting sustainable use of forest resources. It contains for the first time in a publicly accessible, user-friendly format, up-to-date and harmonized information on the Gabonese forest sector. Future versions of the Atlas will build upon this pilot study – particularly regarding data on timber production, agricultural zones and logging roads derived from satellite imagery.

Background

In 2006, WRI signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Gabonese Ministry of Forest Economy, Water, Fishing, and Aquaculture (MEFEPA) to collect data and create tools necessary to support sustainable management of Gabon’s forests. These efforts culminated in the creation of this first-ever Interactive Forest Atlas for the country.

The collaboration between MEFEPA and WRI aims to improve the quality and availability of relevant geographic data, as well as to build the necessary capacity to collect, manage and apply this information. The capacity of actors in the forest sector to collect and use spatial data remains very weak, due to:

lack of available information
insufficient communication between actors in the sector (ex: data producers and information users), and
the absence of national research, development, and inter-sector integration programs

MEFEPA and WRI aim to encourage the production and exchange of forest ecosystem information and knowledge, and to address all stakeholders working in sustainable forest management – including political leaders, private companies, civil society, and the donor community.

Products and Data

The MEFEPA-WRI initiative is unique due to the fact that it presents forest data in a visual manner, combining data and information that had never previously been linked together or accessible to the public. This Pilot version is not an exhaustive source of information on existing logging titles, rather the collection, verification, and presentation of forest production data contained within focuses on those forest concessions currently engaged in sustainable forest management processes.

This Pilot version of the Atlas is composed of 5 distinct products:

A presentation and user manual which provides installation instructions and a visualization of the atlas and its content
A mapping application, which allows users to visualize maps in detail, to make panoramic views or zoom in on points of interest, to visualize data layers, to examine the data bases, and to print the maps
Geographic Information System (GIS) data and metadata, including original data files and attributes
An overview report providing the legislative context, analysis and potential applications of the interactive atlas towards sustainable forest management
A poster of official logging concessions and protected areas

Recommendations

The principle recommendations stemming from the Interactive Forest Atlas focus on the policies and actions that the Gabonese forest administration might undertake, alongside those which already exists, in order to make sustainable forest management a reality.

Recommendations include:

Normalize procedures and harmonize the tax system to encourage sustainable use of the resource and full participation
Implement veritable decentralization of forest resource management in partnership with stakeholders to ensure that the national working group serves as a forum for innovation sharing, forest management, information capacity building on forest management, and evaluation methods
Put in place the necessary institutional structures to: a) better define informational needs on the national scale; b) calibrate data and protocol measures; c) facilitate access to data; and d) develop standards and best practices on sustainable management, goods, and services
Reinforce national capacity through stakeholder training – focusing on the collection, storage, and processing of data received from national technical institutions, private operators, NGOs, and representatives of civil society
Ensure that universities and technical institutes are using the most up-to-date forest information, and encourage national and international bodies to carry out research on indicators which are difficult to measure
Employ standardized criteria and indicators as a base of national information on sustainable forest management

The Interactive Forest Atlas of Gabon project received generous support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

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Résumé

L’Atlas Forestier Interactif du Gabon est à la fois un outil de gestion de l’information et de support à la prise de décision dans le domaine de l’utilisation durable des ressources naturelles. Pour la première fois, il comprend des données actualisées et harmonisées sur le secteur forestier gabonais - le tout dans un format facile à utiliser. Les prochaines versions de l’atlas incluront de nouvelles données concernant la production forestière, les zones de plantations agricoles et d’élevage, et la cartographie des pistes d’exploitation forestière à partir des images satellitaires.

Contexte

Le Ministère de L’Economie Forestière, des Eaux, de la Pêche et l’Aquaculture du Gabon (MEFEPA) et le World Resources Institute (WRI) ont convenu de s’associer afin de développer des outils et base de données permettant d’améliorer le suivi de la gestion durable des forêts du Gabon par la production, notamment, d’un atlas forestier interactif.

Cette collaboration entre le MEFEPA et WRI vise à faciliter la prise de décision quant à la gestion des ressources forestières du pays en améliorant la qualité et la disponibilité des informations géographiques relatives à ces dernières. En effet, la capacité des acteurs de la gestion durable des forêts à collecter les données et à utiliser les données spatiales reste encore très faible, du fait, entre autre de : (i) la faible qualité de l’information disponible (information disparate, sources de données fragmentaires, absence d’utilisation de standards, manque de coordination dans la gestion et la diffusion de l’information aux différents niveaux, etc.), (ii) la faiblesse ou absence de communication entre acteurs (producteurs des données et utilisateurs de l’information), (iii) l’absence des programmes nationaux de recherche, de développement et d’intégration intersectorielle et (iv) l’absence de communication entre acteurs locaux et faiblesse des partenariats.

Produits et Données

Ce rapport vise à donner une vue d’ensemble de l’Atlas forestier interactif du Gabon (version Pilote). Il traite de son but, son contenu, des méthodes de collecte des données, des informations collectées et de son élaboration. Il donne également quelques exemples d’applications possibles. Cette première version pilote ne se veut pas exhaustive. En effet, la collecte, la vérification et la présentation des données des forêts de production du Gabon a porté sur les concessions forestières engagées dans le processus d’aménagement forestier. En outre, une des utilisations essentielles de cet outil dans l’avenir se veut être un outil d’aide à la gestion et au contrôle forestier. C’est à ce titre que les versions ultérieures de cet atlas devront intégrer, outre les données exhaustives du domaine de production (présentation des autres titres d’exploitation forestière), les zones de plantations agricoles et d’élevage, et la cartographie des pistes d’exploitation forestière à partir des images satellitaires.

La production de cette version pilote de l’Atlas forestier interactif du Gabon s’inscrit dans le cadre de l’exécution du projet conjoint issu de la convention de collaboration MEFEPA-WRI. Il vise à inspirer les politiques nationales, à favoriser les échanges et la production des connaissances sur les écosystèmes forestiers et s’adresse à l’ensemble des acteurs de la gestion durable des forêts (pouvoirs publics, compagnies privées, société civile, bailleurs de fonds). Cette initiative doit son originalité au recueil des données et des informations forestières, à leur présentation visuelle et à la combinaison de données et d’informations qui, jusqu’ici, n’étaient ni reliées, ni facilement accessibles.

Cette première version de l’Atlas forestier interactif du Gabon (version pilote) se présentera sous la forme d’un CD-ROM comprenant cinq (5) produits distincts, à savoir:

le manuel de présentation et d’utilisation qui fournit les instructions relatives à l’installation et à la visualisation de l’atlas et de son contenu;
une application cartographique qui permet aux utilisateurs de visualiser les cartes en détail, de faire des panoramiques ou des zooms sur les zones d’intérêt, de visualiser des couches d’informations (soit séparément, soit en combinaison), d’interroger des bases de données et enfin d’imprimer des cartes;
les données du système d’information géographique (SIG) et les métadonnées incluent les fichiers et attributs originaux des ensembles de données;
un document de synthèse donnant une vue d’ensemble de l’objectif, du contenu et des éléments méthodologiques de l’atlas et décrivant en détail les différentes thématiques portant sur les applications attendues pouvant être utiles aux décideurs et techniciens.
un poster présentant l’affectation du Domaine Forestier Permanent de l’Etat.

Recommandations

Les principales recommandations suivantes concernent les procédures et les actes administratifs, les aspects organisationnels et le développement de partenariats pertinents que l’administration forestière gabonaise doit prendre en complément de ceux déjà existants afin que le processus de la gestion durable devienne une réalité pour l’ensemble des acteurs. Elles concernent aussi les protocoles d’inventaires, de collecte et de traitement des données permettant de s’assurer de la qualité, la fiabilité, l’exhaustivité et la cohérence des données ainsi que des informations produites.

Il s’agit de :

normaliser les procédures et harmoniser la fiscalité afin d’inciter les acteurs à un engagement véritable et soutenu sur le terrain permettant d’éviter une foresterie à plusieurs vitesses;
développer le concept de décentralisation en partenariat entre acteurs (collaboration technique)en faisant en sorte que le groupe national de travail (GNT) serve de forum ou de plate forme pour le partage des innovations, la promotion de l’aménagement des forêts, à l’amélioration de la capacité d’information sur l’aménagement durable des forêts ainsi que les méthodes d’évaluation.
mettre en place une organisation hiérarchique à plusieurs niveaux qui aurait pour mission de (i) mieux définir les besoins en informations sur le plan national, (ii) calibrer les données et protocoles de mesure, (iii) faciliter l’accès aux données issues des technologies d’observation de la terre, des données de terrain, (iv) développer des standards et les meilleures pratiques de gestion durable, des biens et services autour de l’information. La coordination serait du ressort des institutions à vocation avérée et de même portée. Cette organisation aurait le mérite d’harmoniser toutes les questions de base (toponymie, protocoles expérimentaux, choix des données) en vue de faciliter ultérieurement les comparaisons et la production d’informations.
procéder à un renforcement des capacités en accentuant la formation des acteurs. Ce renforcement mettrait ainsi l’accent sur l’amélioration de la fiabilité et de la qualité des opérations de récolte, d’archivage, de traitement des données recueillies par les institutions nationales techniques mandatées et par les opérateurs privés, les Organisations non Gouvernementale (ONG) et les représentants de la société civile. Il s’effectuerait sur une revue de leur cadre institutionnel et juridique, l’établissement de chaînes de production en y introduisant des normes de qualité, à travers des formations techniques de longue ou courte durée pour les cadres, techniciens et les opérateurs. Des formations aux Principes, Critères et Indicateurs (PCI) de l’Organisation Africaine du Bois (OAB) et l’OIBT seraient à renouveler, ainsi que celles relatives à la certification et aux méthodes et techniques des audits forestiers.
rechercher la contribution de l’ensemble des acteurs, soutenir les universités, grandes écoles et instituts supérieurs à utiliser l’information la plus récente sur l’aménagement des forêts et sur les PCI OAB/OIBT. Encourager les organismes nationaux et internationaux à réaliser des travaux de recherches sur les indicateurs difficiles à mesurer.
utiliser les critères et indicateurs comme base d’information nationale sur l’aménagement durable des forêts auprès des acteurs (administration, ONG, opérateurs économiques, organismes internationaux)

Le projet de l’Atlas Forestier Interactif du Gabon a été entièrement et généreusement financé par l’Agence Américaine Pour le Développement (USAID).

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Mapping a Better Future: How Spatial Analysis Can Benefit Wetlands and Reduce Poverty in Uganda

Payson Schwin — Wed, 06 May 2009 14:28:28 -0400

Mapping a Better Future

Courtesy of NTV Uganda
Watch on YouTube

Uganda has abundant natural wealth. Its varied wetlands, including grass swamps, mountain bogs, seasonal floodplains, and swamp forests, provide services and products worth hundreds of millions of dollars per year, making them a vital contributor to the national economy. Ugandans use wetlands—often called the country’s “granaries for water”—to sustain their lives and livelihoods. They rely on them for water, construction material, and fuel, and use them for farming, fishing, and to graze livestock. Wetlands supply direct or subsistence employment for 2.7 million people, almost 10 percent of the population. In many parts of the country, wetland products and services are the sole source for livelihoods and the main safety net for the poorest households. Sustainable management of Uganda’s wetlands is thus not only sound economic policy, it is also a potent strategy for poverty reduction.

Recognizing this, Uganda’s Government was the first to create a national wetlands policy in Africa. Over the past decade, Uganda has also instituted the National Wetlands Information System, a rich database on the use and health of Uganda’s wetlands which in its coverage and detail is unique in Africa.

This publication builds on those initiatives by combining information from the wetlands database with pioneering poverty location maps developed by the Uganda Bureau of Statistics. The new maps and accompanying analyses will help policy-makers classify wetlands by their main uses, conditions, and poverty profile and identify areas with the greatest need of pro-poor wetland management interventions. The information generated can also be fed into national poverty reduction strategies and resource management plans.

This is an innovative, pragmatic approach to integrating efforts to reduce poverty while sustaining ecosystems which has implications for improving policy-making in Uganda and beyond.

The publication is aimed at high level decision-makers and has two key purposes:

To show decision-makers responsible for Uganda’s wetlands where sustainable wetland management can have the greatest impacts on reducing poverty, and how community profiles derived from poverty maps can facilitate wetland interventions which better serve the poor. Maps of poverty and wetland indicators can serve as a bridge between different government sectors as they consider opportunities for achieving multiple socioeconomic and environmental objectives.
To show decision-makers involved in poverty reduction how maps derived from Uganda’s National Wetlands Information System can help to identify wetlands with degradation risks or economic potential, and show how these areas coincide with different poverty levels. Such knowledge can improve efforts to integrate wetland issues into poverty reduction strategies.

Mapping a Better Future: How Spatial Analysis Can Benefit Wetlands and Reduce Poverty in Uganda uses an innovative approach to integrate spatial data on poverty and wetlands use. Drawing on Uganda’s rich baseline of wetland data and poverty mapping, the report provides a detailed examination of the links between ecosystem services and the location of poor communities and presents practical lessons for policy-makers across government.

Background: A Brief History of Wetlands Management in Uganda gives an overview of the Ugandan government’s efforts to date on wetlands management and its relation to poverty.
Managing Wetlands and Reducing Poverty: Issues and Challenges highlights the many benefits wetlands provide to Uganda’s people, and introduces the latest poverty maps. It then summarizes how wetlands and poverty issues are addressed in Uganda’s Poverty Eradication Action Plan and Wetlands Sector Strategic Plan.
Wetland Characteristics and Uses presents maps of permanent and seasonal wetlands and of wetland area per capita. It also examines main wetland uses as inventoried in the National Wetlands Information System.
Spatial Analysis of Wetland and Poverty Indicators demonstrates how combining spatial analyses of such indicators can improve the information and analytical basis for decision- making. These comparisons incorporate the diversity of wetland products and the impacts of wetland use.
Adding Value: Combining Wetland and Poverty Maps with Economic Analysis illustrates how the depth and benefi ts of these analyses can be further advanced by augmenting wetland and poverty maps with fi ndings from economic valuation studies. A case study of papyrus harvesting’s potential to reduce poverty is included.
Moving Forward: Lessons Learned and Recommendations looks ahead, describes lessons learned, and makes recommendations for stakeholders involved in poverty reduction and the sustainable use of wetlands in Uganda and around the world.

Key Findings & Recommendations

Findings

The maps and analyses in this publication are primarily illustrative, but do support the following conclusions:

Detailed mapping of previously unused data confirms that wetlands provide multiple benefi ts in every district, and to every citizen of Uganda.
The diversity of products obtained from wetlands in specific locations ranges widely, from a handful to up to 24 products; levels of harmful impacts on wetlands by people also vary greatly across the country.
Spatial analyses of selected poverty-wetland indicators reveal no clear pattern at the subcounty level–despite popular belief that the poorest areas are always the most degraded.
The overlay analyses of poverty and wetland maps are most useful for identifying subcounties that share similar poverty and wetland characteristics, and thus may lend themselves to similar wetland management approaches and intervention strategies. Economic studies that quantify the value of wetland products and services can be linked to poverty and wetland maps to gauge the economic potential of specific wetland uses in reducing poverty.

Recommendations

Further strengthening Uganda’s supply of data and analytical capacity will provide major returns for the country’s people and natural resource base by improving wetland management planning and prioritization efforts, especially in these two areas:

Complete data entry and collection for the National Wetlands Information System, improve data consistency, and update wetland and land cover information.
Strengthen analysis, mapping, and economic valuation efforts within the Wetlands Management Department.

Improvements in lives, livelihoods, and wetland health could result directly from this supply of new maps and analyses. Specifically, government agencies could use the information to act on decision-making opportunities in these four areas:

Incorporate poverty information into the existing system for selecting wetlands for priority management interventions.
Consider wetland management as part of local poverty reduction efforts, such as creating new livelihood strategies.
Promote “win-win” collaboration to support poverty, wetland health, and other goals between agencies responsible for health, water, sanitation, agriculture, energy, and environment.
Make poverty and wetland maps and their analyses a central component of local decision-making at district level.

Water Quality Trading Programs: An International Overview

Tim Herzog — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 18:07:59 -0400

Water quality trading is gaining traction in a number of watersheds around the world. It is a market-based approach that works alongside water quality regulation to improve water quality, providing flexibility in how regulations are met and potentially lowering regulatory compliance and abatement costs. Our research identified 57 water quality trading programs worldwide. Of these, 26 are active, 21 are under consideration or development, and 10 are inactive or are completed pilots with no plans for future trades. The majority of programs were located in the United States, with only six programs existing outside the United States—four in Australia, one in New Zealand, and one in Canada.

From our assessment of these water quality trading programs, we identified five key factors that stakeholders believed were important for the successful implementation of their trading programs:

Strong regulatory and/or non-regulatory drivers, which helped create a demand for water quality credits;
Minimal potential liability risks to the regulated community from meeting regulations through trades;
Robust, consistent, and standardized estimation methodologies for nonpoint source actions;
Standardized tools, transparent processes, and online registries to minimize transaction costs; and
Buy-in from local and state stakeholders.

Before going to the expense of developing a water quality trading program, we recommend that the relevant bodies—either governmental or nongovernmental—ensure these factors are in place.

Biofuels and the Time Value of Carbon: Recommendations for GHG Accounting Protocols

admin — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0500

The quantification of the carbon dioxide emissions impact associated with land-use change for biofuels production is complicated by the fact that the carbon costs from land-use change and the avoided emissions from substituting biofuels for fossil fuel in transport occur over an extended period of time. Estimating the net carbon impact therefore requires a method for aggregating the increased and avoided emissions that play out over time into a single figure. The choice of accounting method can have a significant impact on the resulting net emissions measure for specific land-use options such as biofuels production. This in turn will influence the relative desirability of different land management scenarios for a given piece of land. Traditional cost-benefit analysis regularly uses discounting to compare and aggregate monetary units over time. However, extrapolation of this approach to assess physical units of carbon dioxide emissions released or avoided in the future is not straightforward. Selection of an appropriate discount rate for physical carbon units requires a consideration of multiple additional variables. These include rates of carbon accumulation and decay in the atmosphere and estimates of the marginal damages arising or avoided from changes in atmospheric carbon stocks.

Accounting recommendations for quantifying the emissions impact of land-use change for biofeedstock production

Ideally, a GHG accounting method for land use change associated with biofeedstock production should explicitly analyze the expected damages associated with those fl ows over time. The corresponding monetary units associated with this damage can then be discounted to determine how the impacts of future flows compare to those of the present.
There is little theoretical justification for discounting physical carbon flows. Discount rates used for physical carbon units are not analogous to monetary discount rates such as interest rates or the social rate of time preference. They therefore should not be selected based solely on an extrapolation of how those financial discount rates are usually applied.
The “project horizon” should be considered independently of the longer atmospheric “impact horizon” when selecting appropriate discounting horizons. In the context of biofuels production, the “project horizon” refers to the period of time over which feedstock cultivation will occur (and benefits from displaced transport fossil fuel realized). The “impact horizon” refers to the period of time over which impacts of increased or decreased emissions are felt in the atmosphere.
The impact horizon should be applied as a rolling target that is measured relative to the year of emissions, which can occur at any point over the project horizon, rather than as a fixed target that is measured relative to year 0 of the project. Atmospheric impacts are therefore fully accounted for, whether the emissions or emissions savings occur at the end of the project or at the beginning.
When it is necessary to bypass the full-cost accounting suggested in #1, selection of a next-best discount procedure for carbon units may need to consider: a range of possible discount rate values beyond those normally used for financial discounting (including zero or negative numbers); different discount figures for the two distinct time horizons; and non-constant numbers such as declining discount rates for the longer impact horizon.
Salvaged carbon from acreage reversion or revegetation should not be considered as part of the GHG accounting protocol for land-use conversion for feedstock production. Carbon benefi ts associated with revegetation are not guaranteed when acreage is initially converted to biofuels production, and should more appropriately be considered a benefit associated with a future form of land-use change should such conversion occur.

WRI Publications Feed: People & Ecosystems

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Report Overview

Key Findings and Recommendations

Findings

Recommendations

Eutrophication: Policies, Action, and Strategies to Address Nutrient Pollution

Additional Links

Measuring Nature’s Benefits: A Preliminary Roadmap for Improving Ecosystem Service Indicators

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Sustainable Procurement of Wood and Paper-Based Products: Version 1.1

Interactive Forest Atlas for Gabon (Atlas Forestier Interactif du Gabon)

On This Page/À Cette Page

Summary

Background

Products and Data

Recommendations

Résumé

Contexte

Produits et Données

Recommandations

Mapping a Better Future: How Spatial Analysis Can Benefit Wetlands and Reduce Poverty in Uganda

Mapping a Better Future

Contents

Key Findings & Recommendations

Findings

Recommendations

Water Quality Trading Programs: An International Overview

Biofuels and the Time Value of Carbon: Recommendations for GHG Accounting Protocols

Accounting recommendations for quantifying the emissions impact of land-use change for biofeedstock production