Mitigation Analysis

Forest Sector

The development and stability of tropical countries have been linked to the health of tropical forests. Because tropical forests are important environmentally as well as socioeconomically, and harbor extremely valuable and diverse genetic resources, the loss and degradation of these ecosystems is of major concern to the international scientific and political communities. More recently, tropical forests have also been associated with the stability of global, regional, and local climate, especially considering that forest clearing and burning are important sources of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

In Venezuela, forest clearing plays a very important role in the carbon budget, accounting for more than 40% of national carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Human interference has affected large areas of forest; many forests have been cleared for agriculture and pasture activities and other development projects. These activities cause well-known environmental problems and deplete important and strategic genetic resources. At the same time, in spite of all the programs and policies, the forest sector has not been able to effectively reduce forest degradation. On the contrary, to certain extent, forest degradation has also been linked with timber production from natural forests, usually in an unsustainable fashion, and with an emerging industry that has not met the needs of the national market.

On the other hand, forest practices in the tropics have the potential to significantly offset carbon emissions and are considered to be feasible mitigation options, especially if they generate economic, ecological, or social benefits. Some specific ongoing forest activities in Venezuela, such as establishment of large-scale commercial plantations and natural forest management, are net carbon sinks that could be feasible alternatives within a national plan to reduce carbon emissions in Venezuela (CVCC,1995). Although, from the technical perspective, Venezuela«s potential to reduce net carbon emissions by implementing such options might be relatively large, social and economic constraints could offset the country«s capacity to successfully implement these types of measures.

This analysis provides a discussion of the central issues involved in the assessment of mitigation options based on forest practices for both conserving existing native forests and enhancing forest cover in Venezuela. Two forest projects with different purposes are used as case studies in order to extrapolate this local experience to a broader context that includes carbon emission reduction and sequestration.

The first case study is an industrial plantation established by a state owned company for pulp and paper production. The second case study is a government project proposal to manage and recover, with the help of local communities, a large forest area that is legally protected for wood production. This project proposal has several components that are analyzed individually: forest management, forest protection, intensive plantations, and agroforestry.

Not all the information and data needed to estimate the costs and carbon sequestration potential of such projects are available and the existing data may be outdated. Consequently, in this analysis, we only attempt to provide a general overview of the issues involved in a mitigation assessment and an estimate of the possible effects of specific forest mitigation options for reducing carbon emissions in Venezuela. In order to assess mitigation options, we analyze the two case studies and assume that similar alternatives are implemented on a larger scale, under two different scenarios: a technical scenario and a constrained scenario.

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