Details of Award
NERC Reference : NE/S013644/1
International - Raising the value of biodiversity-friendly cocoa and carbon storage: ensuring sustainable incomes around Gola Rainforest National Park
Grant Award
- Principal Investigator:
- Professor DA Coomes, University of Cambridge, Plant Sciences
- Grant held at:
- University of Cambridge, Plant Sciences
- Science Area:
- Terrestrial
- Overall Classification:
- Unknown
- ENRIs:
- Biodiversity
- Global Change
- Natural Resource Management
- Science Topics:
- Community Ecology
- Biodiversity
- Habitat fragmentation
- Land use
- Protected areas
- Terrestrial communities
- Tropical forests
- Conservation Ecology
- Biodiversity conservation
- Conservation management
- Habitat fragmentation
- Land use change
- Protected areas
- Species diversity
- Tropical forests
- DNA barcoding
- Systematics & Taxonomy
- Species richness
- Environmental Informatics
- Biodiversity monitoring
- Remote Sensing & Earth Obs.
- Abstract:
- 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
- Period of Award:
- 14 Nov 2019 - 10 Jan 2022
- Value:
- £33,035 Split Award
Authorised funds only
- NERC Reference:
- NE/S013644/1
- Grant Stage:
- Completed
- Scheme:
- Innovation
- Grant Status:
- Closed
- Programme:
- Innovation Projects
This grant award has a total value of £33,035
FDAB - Financial Details (Award breakdown by headings)
| DI - Other Costs | Indirect - Indirect Costs | DA - Investigators | DA - Estate Costs | DI - Staff | DI - T&S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| £4,145 | £12,425 | £4,070 | £1,036 | £9,638 | £1,723 |
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