Capacity building for carbon- and biodiversity-based payments for ecosystem services in the Peruvian Amazon

我们经常在媒体上听到关于热带森林的报道。纪录片节目报道了它们的巨大多样性-在这些生态系统中发现了超过50%的物种-或者它们作为碳储存的重要性，因为它们包含了陆地上所有碳的60%。然而，我们也听到了它们的破坏：经济压力和人口膨胀如何驱使小规模农民清除它们，大型农业综合企业如何将大片土地转化为油棕榈种植园或大豆生产，以及如何随着这些商品价格的上涨，从热带森林地区开采矿物和石油的压力越来越大。森林砍伐不仅导致生物多样性的丧失，还增加了大气中温室气体的浓度，从而加快了气候变化的速度：热带森林的砍伐占人类二氧化碳排放量的25%。为从热带森林中获得经济利益已作了许多尝试。然而，最近出现了一种新的制度：通过创造一个市场，并赋予热带森林提供的生物多样性和碳储存等环境效益或“生态系统服务”以经济价值，就有可能获得保护森林的资金。从理论上讲，这些款项可以用来解决许多热带森林地区普遍存在的严重贫困问题，这是森林砍伐的一个重要原因。这些付款如何运作的一个机制是，降低森林砍伐率的项目和国家将能够在国际碳市场上或通过双边协议出售由此产生的二氧化碳排放量减少。这一想法正被作为一项国际协议的组成部分加以推广，以接替旨在减少温室气体排放的国际条约--京都议定书--以及自愿市场。各国政府和非政府组织也在积极制定计划，为直接有助于保护热带森林的其他属性（如生物多样性）的项目提供资金。我们的项目旨在解决生态系统服务付费的广泛概念。从理论上讲，通过单一机制降低热带森林砍伐率、保护碳储存和生物多样性以及减轻贫困的可能性非常有吸引力。然而，这些计划如何运作的细节是一个激烈辩论的主题。重要的问题是如何衡量和监测项目声称要保护的碳或生物多样性，产权往往不明确的地区的适当体制框架，付款如何实际到达当地社区，以及它们是否以公平的方式实现减贫目标，当地社区本身参与项目，以及付款可能对这些社区的活动产生的影响，包括增加项目地区以外的森林砍伐率。解决这些问题需要一个跨学科的团队。因此，我们召集了具有相关专门知识的广泛的大学、非政府组织和政府机构，以确定制定此类项目所需的研究和培训，重点是秘鲁亚马逊地区。秘鲁是一个特别适合此类项目的地方，因为雨林是世界上最多样化的地区之一，但它们面临着伐木、石油勘探和道路建设带来的越来越大的压力。主要的政府和非政府组织机构有强烈的动力通过基于生态系统服务付费的新项目来应对这些威胁，其双重目标是减轻当地的高度贫困。我们与这些组织的紧密联系意味着我们的研究结果将很容易应用于现有的保护区。因此，我们的目标是为这些项目如何在秘鲁和更广泛的亚马逊地区发挥作用制定一个蓝图。

We regularly hear about tropical forests in the media. Documentary programmes report on their great diversity - more than 50% of all species are found in these ecosystems - or their importance as a store of carbon, as they contain 60% of all carbon found on land. However, we also hear about their destruction: how economic pressures and population expansion drives their clearance by small-scale farmers, how large agribusinesses convert vast areas into oil palm plantations or soy bean production, and how pressures to extract minerals and oil from tropical forest regions is increasing as the price of these commodities rise. Not only does deforestation lead to a loss of biodiversity, it also adds to the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and hence increases the rate of climate change: deforestation of tropical forests contributes 25% of all carbon dioxide emissions by humans. Many attempts have been made to derive economic benefits from tropical forests. However, recently a new system has emerged: the idea that by creating a market and giving economic value to the environmental benefits or 'ecosystem services' like biodiversity and carbon storage that tropical forests provide, it is possible to obtain money to protect standing forest. In theory, these payments could be used to address the poverty that is widespread and acute in many tropical forest regions and is an important cause of deforestation. One mechanism for how these payments might work, is that projects and countries that reduce rates of deforestation will be able to sell the resulting reduction in carbon dioxide emissions on international carbon markets or through bilateral agreements. This idea is being promoted as a component of an international agreement to succeed the Kyoto protocol - the international treaty designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions - as well as in voluntary markets. Governments and NGOs are also actively developing schemes to fund projects that directly help to preserve other attributes of tropical forests, such as biodiversity. It is this broad concept of payments for ecosystem services that our project aims to address. In theory, the possibility to reduce the rate of tropical deforestation, conserve carbon stocks and biodiversity, and alleviate poverty through a single mechanism, is very attractive. However, the details of how these schemes might operate is the subject of a vigorous debate. Important issues surround how to measure and monitor the carbon or biodiversity that a project claims to protect, the appropriate institutional framework in regions where property titles are often unclear, how payments actually reach local communities and whether they achieve the goal of poverty alleviation in an equitable way, the participation of local communities in the projects themselves, and the effect that payments might have on the activities of these communities, including increasing the rate of deforestation outside project areas. Addressing these issues requires an interdisciplinary team. We have therefore assembled a broad range of university, NGO and government institutions with relevant expertise to identify the research and training that is required to develop such projects, with a focus on the Peruvian Amazon. Peru is a particularly good place for this kind of project as the rain forests are some of the most diverse in the world but they face increasing pressure from logging, oil exploration and from rising levels of access due to road building. Key governmental and NGO institutions are strongly motivated to combat these threats through new projects based on payments for ecosystem services with the twin objective of alleviating the high levels of local poverty. The strong links that we have with these organisations means that our results will be readily applied in existing protected areas. As a result we aim to create a blueprint for how these projects could work both in Peru and in the wider Amazonian region.