International - Raising the value of biodiversity-friendly cocoa and carbon storage: ensuring sustainable incomes around Gola Rainforest National Park

热带森林和农业争夺同一片土地，但利益却分配给不同的人。热带森林的两个主要好处是热带自然的持续存在，这丰富了我们的生活，并将碳储存在活着的树木中，调节我们的气候。全世界的人们都得到了这些好处。相比之下，农业带来的大部分好处（粮食和收入）归于农民本身，加上地方和国家消费者以及地方和国家经济，其结果是，任何特定地点的土地使用决定大多将由农业受益者而不是热带森林受益者作出，原因显而易见：农民知道，他们从森林转为农业中受益，并能够将他们的愿望转化为行动，而热带森林的受益者是全球性的，但个人受益有限，而且难以将他们的愿望转化为行动。其结果是热带森林继续被转化为农业。试图纠正这种决策不平衡的一种方法是使用所谓的“基于市场的工具”，使热带森林的保护至少对当地社区和农业综合企业来说与农业一样有利可图。其中两个工具是碳信用支付和农产品溢价定价。例如，航空公司航班和“雨林友好型”巧克力的消费者支付额外费用，产生的收入流向国家及其当地人口，以补偿他们没有将森林转化为农田。然而，最大的挑战是验证这些付款确实导致了对高碳和生物多样性森林的保护。直到最近，由于以可审计和低成本的方式测量森林碳和生物多样性存在技术困难，这一挑战在很大程度上是无法克服的。然而，最近卫星遥感技术的重大进步使得人们能够以每张图像的低成本（在许多情况下，免费下载）反复跟踪森林覆盖的变化，剩下的挑战是解释这些数据丰富的图像，以便量化地上生物量的变化（以衡量碳储存的变化）和这些森林所包含的生物多样性的数量。这一挑战需要地面测量来生成数据，这些数据可用于解释来自卫星传感器的原始数据。这就是我们的建议，我们在塞拉利昂的戈拉雨林国家公园（GRNP）的908平方公里的森林缓冲区工作，可可是森林砍伐的潜在驱动力，是主要的经济作物。到目前为止，只有一小部分农民获得了“雨林友好”可可的更高价格，如果缓冲区的森林砍伐继续有增无减，碳排放的支付将受到威胁。基于卫星的测绘将为可持续发展计划提供信息，使可可种植能够直接扩展到低碳和生物多样性地区，而基于卫星的持续监测将使任何人都能够轻松核实碳储存和生物多样性是否得到保护。因此，雨林友好型可可的碳支付和溢价定价将得到保障和扩大，改善生活在缓冲区的22，000人的福利，同时也减少了对森林的压力。该项目是与GRC-LG共同设计的，他们管理GRNP，并确定了更好的决策支持系统的需求。目前通过五年一次的调查核实碳支付的方法效率低下，而且没有考虑到生物多样性。GRC-LG与塞拉利昂政府有着密切的联系，使这项工作处于有利地位，可以影响西非其他森林碳项目的管理。关键词：生物多样性，碳，可可，REDD+，元条形码，遥感，热带森林

Tropical forest and agriculture compete for the same land, but the benefits are distributed to different people. Two key benefits from tropical forest are the continued existence of tropical nature, which enriches our lives, and the storage of carbon in living trees, which regulates our climate. These benefits accrue to people around the world. In contrast, most of the benefits from agriculture (food and income) accrue to the farmers themselves, plus local and national consumers and local and national economies.The consequence is that land-use decisions in any given location will mostly be made by the beneficiaries of agriculture rather than the beneficiaries of tropical forest, for obvious reasons: farmers know that they benefit from converting forest to agriculture and are able to convert their desires into action, while the beneficiaries of tropical forest are global but individually only benefit a little and also find it difficult to convert their desires into action. The result is that tropical forest continues to be converted to agriculture.One way to try to right this imbalance in decision-making is to use what are called 'market-based instruments' to make the conservation of tropical forest at least as profitable to local communities and to agribusinesses as farming. Two such instruments are carbon-credit payments and premium-pricing for agricultural goods. For instance, consumers of airline flights and 'Rainforest-Friendly' chocolate bars pay extra, and the generated income streams are directed to countries and their local populations to compensate them for not converting forest to farmland.However, the big challenge is to verify that these payments are indeed resulting in the conservation of forest that is high in carbon and biodiversity. Until recently, this challenge has been largely insuperable because of the technical difficulties of measuring forest carbon and biodiversity in ways that are auditable and low-cost. Recently, though, major advances in satellite remote-sensing are making it possible to track changes in forest cover, repeatedly and at a low cost per image (in many cases, free to download).The remaining challenge is to interpret these data-rich images in order to quantify changes in the amount of aboveground biomass (to measure change in carbon stocks) and in the amount of biodiversity that those forests contain. This challenge requires on-the-ground measurements to generate the data that can be used to interpret raw data from satellite-based sensors.This is what we propose, working in the 908 km2 forested buffer zone of the Gola Rainforest National Park (GRNP) in Sierra Leone, where cocoa, a potential driver of deforestation, is the main cash crop. So far, only a small portion of farmers receive a higher price for 'Rainforest Friendly' cocoa, and payments for carbon are jeopardised if forest clearance in the buffer zone continues unabated. Satellite-based mapping would inform sustainable development plans that allow cocoa expansion to be directed to areas of low carbon and biodiversity, and ongoing satellite-based monitoring would make it possible for anyone to easily verify whether carbon stocks and biodiversity are being protected. Carbon payments and premium-pricing for Rainforest-Friendly cocoa would therefore be safeguarded and expanded, improving the welfare of the 22,000 people living in the buffer zone while also reducing pressure on forest.This project has been co-designed with GRC-LG who manage the GRNP and who identified the need for a better decision-support system. The current method of verification for carbon payments via five-yearly surveys is inefficient and does not account for biodiversity. GRC-LG has strong links with the Sierra Leone government, placing this work in a strong position to influence the management of other forest-carbon projects in West Africa.Keywords: biodiversity, carbon, cocoa, REDD+, metabarcoding, remote sensing, tropical forest