(This is the sixth in a 10-part series intended to look at some of the issues surrounding Guyana’s bid for funds from the World Bank-administered Forest Carbon Partnership Fund (FCPF) and from Norway, and for the President’s Low Carbon Development Strategy.)
By Janette Bulkan
In my last article in this series I mentioned three considerable uncertainties about the areas of Guyana’s forest and who administers them. Reliable knowledge about forest areas is essential in schemes for trading the carbon sequestered in forests for carbon emitted as a result of human activities. This is because the trades are formal contracts and so subject to business contract law. If Guyana sequesters less carbon or emits more carbon than the amounts for which it makes claims, then the government (or a community engaged in carbon trading) could be subject to legal action by the business partner.
It may not be apparent how the 15 million hectares (Mha) of forest mentioned in connection with the President’s Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) relate to the 18.5 Mha generally used in the Guyana Forestry Commission’s (GFC) proposals for the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Fund (FCPF). The GFC does not explain how it estimates 18.5 Mha as the national forest cover. The figure used in the National Development Strategy 1996 was 16.9 Mha and the GFC has not been planting or regenerating 1.6 Mha since then.
The LCDS subtracts an estimated 1.7 Mha of forest on titled Amerindian Village Land from the 18.5 Mha, and then subtracts 10 per cent (another 1.7 Mha) from the remainder for biodiversity and habitat conservation, leaving 15.1 Mha. This LCDS base area was valued by McKinsey for the timber harvested by destructive logging, for the minerals obtained by destructive mining, and the whole area cleared progressively over 25 years and replaced by commercial agricultural crops. The combined value of that timber, minerals and crops is McKinsey’s Economic Value to the Nation, a fund from which derives the ten per cent annual annuity referred to by the President as US$580 million. It is not clear how the President’s LCDS can seek donor finance for retaining forest against an improbable destruction scenario, and simultaneously continue the destructive logging and mining which are contrary to long-standing national policies, laws and land management procedures.
Coming back to the FCPF proposal; in terms of biomass or weights of carbon, we need to know the standing stock (I drew an analogy with the stock of tins of sardines in the kitchen cupboard in my first article in this series), the annual increase through natural or assisted tree growth, and the annual loss through natural and human causes. We need all three main components because the institutional architecture of the climate change treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol 1997 has not yet been fixed; this treaty to be negotiated at the 15th Conference of Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change at Copenhagen in December 2009. The GFC would be prudent, therefore, to estimate increases and decreases of carbon as well as the standing stock.
Standing stock of forest carbon
The GFC has claimed a standing stock of 5,000 million tonnes of CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) for the 18.5 Mha of Guyana‘s forest cover. Using the standard conversion of 3.67 tonnes of CO2 to 1 tonne of carbon, this means an average standing stock of 74 tonnes of carbon per hectare (tC/ha). However, this does not match the 93 tC/ha of above-ground carbon plus an assumed 20 per cent of below-ground carbon (mainly in roots), a total of 111 tC/ha which can be derived from the GFC’s CO2e figures in the R-PLAN proposal to the FCPF (page 2 of the June 01, 2009, version). It is also not clear why the GFC is adding carbon in roots, as this is more difficult to measure and monitor than carbon in standing trees.
The GFC says that it is using an average derived from two sources: FAO Forestry Paper 134 “Estimating biomass and biomass change of tropical forests: a primer” by Sandra Brown in 1997, and the desk study by Hans ter Steege (ex-Tropenbos-Guyana programme) for Iwokrama in 2001. Importantly, ter Steege made estimates for the ten forest inventory zones into which Guyana was divided by the FAO Forest Industries Development Survey in the mid-1960s, excluding the Barima-Cuyuni-Kaituma mining areas, the main part of the Pakaraima Mountains and the New River triangle.
High biomass (that is, dense forests) was estimated in the northwestern quadrant of Guyana and the upper Essequibo. However, the GFC notes that the North West is where the bulk of the deforestation by mining has occurred.
FAO forest Above-ground average
Inventory zone Zone location tree biomass (tC/ha)
3 Lower Mazaruni-Cuyuni 103
7 Southern Pakaraima
Mountains 115
10 Upper Essequibo 109
Low biomass was estimated in the northeastern quadrant, the Rupununi savannas (as you would expect) and the mountainous south in the Wai Wai titled Amerindian Village Lands.
FAO forest Above-ground tree
Inventory zone Zone location biomass (tC/ha)
4 Upper Berbice 61
6 Middle Essequibo 70
9 Rupununi / Rewa River / Wai Wai 86
Note: although estimated by ter Steege, the Iwokrama report does not provide the data for the other four forest inventory zones.
The northeastern quadrant includes the intermediate savannas whose forest areas have been repeatedly harvested for wallaba (Eperua falcata) posts and piles, firewood and charcoal, and burned over accidentally and deliberately for many decades. The National Development Strategy (1996, chapter 18 Environmental Policy, section I.E Watersheds) said “As much as 200,000 hectares are believed to be unable to regenerate spontaneously” because of this long mis-management.
Why is this natural variation in standing stock of forest carbon important? Firstly because it reflects the variety of natural productivity due to the heterogeneity of Guyana’s very ancient and infertile hinterland soils. This variety is further compounded by influence of topography and the depth of the water table on the distribution of tree species and forest types within the inventory zones. So such average data are not much help for forest management. And secondly because the forests in the titled and claimed Amerindian areas have considerably less carbon than the denser forests in the middle of Guyana.
Although the titled Amerindian Village Lands were excluded from the President’s draft LCDS, the Ministerial teams from the Office of the President are canvassing the Amerindian communities and arousing understandable concern though this unprecedented attention. It is not clear what any community, Amerindian or other ethnic group, would have to do or not do to fit the LCDS scenario, and which would be different from what national laws and regulations now prescribe.
In summary, the GFC is not explicit enough about the source or calculation of its various figures or which one or ones it wishes to be considered for carbon trading or as contributions towards mitigation of climate change.
In the next article I will look at uncertainties in the estimates of gains and losses of forest carbon.
