Suchergebnisse

With the rapid growth of biofuel production and consumption and the proliferation of policy decisions supporting this expansion, concerns about the biofuel sector's environmental and social impacts are increasing. Consequently, a range of actors – among them governments, multilateral institutions, nongovernmental organisations and multistakeholder industry groups – have created sustainability frameworks, some mandatory, others voluntary. This report examines how the most developed sustainability frameworks for feedstock production (including biofuels) address key environmental issues. It identifies critical gaps in these frameworks and proposes areas for improvement. The main finding is that the frameworks share broad sustainability principles yet they differ greatly in terms of their comprehensiveness and how they apply specific indicators for environmental issues, particularly with respect to land use change (both direct and indirect), allocation of degraded land for feedstock cultivation, and related accounting of greenhouse gas emissions. In the absence of sufficient hard data with which to gauge the effectiveness of existing sustainability frameworks, the report notes that the standards of these frameworks are not sufficient to mitigate the effects of direct and indirect land use change and promote environmental conservation. A key recommendation is that such standards should be complemented by other policy instruments. Furthermore, as sustainability frameworks are only a means to an end, they must be supported by practical guidance, effective interpretation of standards, principles and criteria, and development of verifiable indicators, along with the provision of appropriate tools, approaches and capacity building activities.

También disponible en español con el título: Madera legal: verificación y gobernanza en el sector forestal. Publicado por CATIE ; This book investigates a topical issue in international forest policy development: how to verify the legality of timber sold on regional and international markets in ways that will satisfy both the interests of producer states and the demands of consumers. This seemingly straightforward and technical matter is in fact complex and political. It addresses a critical interface in inter-governmental relations, where producer states' rights of ownership are defended with considerable tenacity. While at one level the subject matter of this book is forest sector-specific, it touches on much broader issues about the balance between sovereign state control and the international stewardship of global public goods, illegality as a dimension of poor governance, and mechanisms of national and international public accountability. ed in this book, is a response to an important level of doubt over the functioning of the normal system of forest control, and involves two key aspects of 'additionality' to address this doubt: first, developing and implementing a set of additional measures to test and validate claims about legal compliance in the forest sector, and second, bringing in an additional set of actors from outside the forest sector, to help strengthen the credibility of these new measures and the accountability of those charged with implementing them. The overall conclusion that gradually emerges is that, to be effective in the situations that are typical of tropical producer states, the control of illegal logging cannot be addressed solely as a problem of criminality nor engineered entirely by external parties. It has, rather, to be positioned within a wider and well-embedded process of governance reform.

También disponible en español con el título: Madera legal: verificación y gobernanza en el sector forestal. Publicado por CATIE ; This book investigates a topical issue in international forest policy development: how to verify the legality of timber sold on regional and international markets in ways that will satisfy both the interests of producer states and the demands of consumers. This seemingly straightforward and technical matter is in fact complex and political. It addresses a critical interface in inter-governmental relations, where producer states' rights of ownership are defended with considerable tenacity. While at one level the subject matter of this book is forest sector-specific, it touches on much broader issues about the balance between sovereign state control and the international stewardship of global public goods, illegality as a dimension of poor governance, and mechanisms of national and international public accountability. ed in this book, is a response to an important level of doubt over the functioning of the normal system of forest control, and involves two key aspects of 'additionality' to address this doubt: first, developing and implementing a set of additional measures to test and validate claims about legal compliance in the forest sector, and second, bringing in an additional set of actors from outside the forest sector, to help strengthen the credibility of these new measures and the accountability of those charged with implementing them. The overall conclusion that gradually emerges is that, to be effective in the situations that are typical of tropical producer states, the control of illegal logging cannot be addressed solely as a problem of criminality nor engineered entirely by external parties. It has, rather, to be positioned within a wider and well-embedded process of governance reform.

The GHG (greenhouse gas) mitigation potential from the agricultural sector is set to increase in coming decades. Much of the agricultural mitigation potential lies in developing countries where systems are dominated by smallholder farmers. There is therefore an opportunity for smallholders not only to gain environmental benefits from carbon friendly practices, but also to receive much needed financial input, either directly from carbon financing, or from development agencies looking to support carbon friendly activities. However, the problem remains of how to quantify carbon gains from mitigation activities carried out by smallholder farmers. Landscape-scale quantification enables farmers to pool resources and expertise, which can put participation in carbon markets and access to other funding sources, within their reach. Therefore, funding agencies, governments and NGOs are increasingly recognizing the benefits of taking a landscape approach to GHG quantification. This paper gives an overview of approaches that have been taken to date for landscape-scale GHG quantification, covering both measurement and modelling and the reliance of one upon the other. The discussion covers ground-based measurement approaches for carbon stock changes in biomass and soils, methods for measuring GHG flux and the application of remote sensing techniques. Computational approaches for estimating carbon stock changes and GHG emissions are discussed, in addition to the use of more complex dynamic ecosystem models. This is followed by an analysis of some of the resources that are available for those wishing to do GHG quantification at the landscape scale in areas dominated by smallholders. This analysis is intended to provide an aid to funding agencies, government agencies, NGOs, academics and others. Information for this section comes from questionnaires distributed to selected resource developers.