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Could REDD Help Save an Embattled Forest in Cambodia?

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Could REDD Help Save an Embattled Forest in Cambodia? English (Chinese) Deutsch (German) Español (Spanish) Français (French) Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian) Italiano (Italian) (Japanese) Português (Portuguese) Could REDD help save an embattled forest in Cambodia? by Rhett A. Butler on 28 October 2016 REDD in Cambodia has faced many obstacles, but now one long-awaited project has just gotten the green light to proceed. Wildlife Alliance is pushing forward with a REDD project that aims to finance the newly established Southern Cardamom National Park's ongoing protection. In an October 2016 interview with Mongabay.com, Gauntlett spoke about the Southern Cardamoms and her hopes for the project. ver the past three decades, few countries lost forest cover faster than Cambodia: over a quarter of the country’s forests were cleared since 1990. Much of that O destruction was driven by logging and conversion for agriculture and plantations. In the late 2000s, Cambodia’s rapid rate of forest loss seemed to make it an ideal candidate for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD), a performance-based approach to conservation that gained traction after 2007 climate talks in Bali, Indonesia. Under REDD, Cambodia would get paid for its success in curbing deforestation of its carbon-dense tropical forests. But REDD has evolved substantially since those days, morphing from what some early backers saw primarily as a market-based carbon trading mechanism into something considerably more complex that currently involves aid-like government to government transfers, philanthropic investments, and voluntary carbon offset markets. Conversations around REDD have also become more nuanced, with recognition of local communities’ rights, land tenure reform, protections for biodiversity, and other safeguards becoming central criteria for project design and implementation. REDD in Cambodia has followed a similar arc. Early euphoria about grandiose projects — some of which may have had dubious climate benefits — has waned and been replaced by real concerns about corruption, conflict, government policy, financing, and efficacy. Accordingly, the number of active and proposed projects has dwindled. But one long-awaited project has just gotten the green light to proceed. Buoyed by the recent decision to declare the Southern Cardamom National Park and the Paris Agreement to combat climate change, Wildlife Alliance is pushing forward with a REDD project that aims to finance the new park’s ongoing protection. Suwanna Gauntlett, the founder and CEO of Wildlife Alliance, says the project — which has been in the works for eight years — could help finance ranger patrols to stabilize the park, protecting both trees and wildlife. In an October 2016 interview with Mongabay.com, Gauntlett spoke about the Southern Cardamoms and her hopes for the project. Rainforest in the Southern Cardamom Mountains. Photo by Rhett A. Butler AN INTERVIEW WITH SUWANNA GAUNTLETT Mongabay.com: Cambodia recently announced the establishment of Southern Cardamom National Park, which was a major accomplishment for Wildlife Alliance. Can you tell us a little about this area? Why it is important? Suwanna Gauntlett: The Cardamom Mountain Range is one of the last great rainforests remaining in Southeast Asia. The mountain range’s rainforest cover plays an extremely important role from a watershed point of view: the vast 18,000 square kilometer forest canopy regulates the highest rainfall of the region (a staggering 3,500-4,500 mm of rain per year) and supplies 22 major waterways supplying the Tonle Sap Lake on the north and the Gulf of Thailand on the south. The Cardamoms are able to continue their vital function of water regulator for the region only because they have been preserved as a continuous tropical rainforest, while most forests in Southeast Asia have been either cleared or fragmented. Avoiding fragmentation can be mainly attributed to Wildlife Alliance who has continuously monitored and intervened to avoid deforestation from 37 industrial development companies over the last 14 years. We work hard to preserve the Cardamom’s water regulation ecosystem function because we want to avoid the acute droughts that other provinces are suffering from each year. Rampant deforestation throughout the country has now resulted in 12 provinces completely losing fresh water reserves during the dry season (up from only 3 in 2010). We fought to preserve the Cardamoms by focusing on the areas of the rainforest that were the most at threat from human development, i.e. in the Southern portion. The fight Suwanna Gauntlett was tough because that section was not yet under legal protection. We were heavily criticized by other conservation organizations who did not understand why we were protecting an area that was not a National Park nor a Protected Forest. Also, we were not buying into the usual conservation approach of identifying ‘priority biodiversity zones’ and allowing the rest of the forest to be developed. Instead, we steered away from traditional conservation and took vigorous action to preserve continuous forest canopy cover over large tracts of land. We knew, that, if we allowed fragmentation, the forest would end up being reduced to islands surrounded by human development. This was not an acceptable outcome for Wildlife Alliance nor its donor community who shares our concern for global climate and for the survival of large mammals. The Cardamoms are a remnant of what used to be known as the “Tropical Forest Belt” that was protecting the Earth at its mid-section along the latitude where the planet is closest to the sun and temperatures are the hottest. This thick, moist vegetation layer was cooling the surface of the ground through its continuous water cycle and, therefore, fulfilling a global rainfall regulation function. Today, only a fraction of this “Tropical Forest Belt” remains. Industrial development has taken over and removed the Earth’s natural temperature regulation system. Ground temperature in the denuded areas has risen significantly, changing the local air currents, and reducing rainfall. NASA Earth Observatory and Duke University (April 2005 issue of the Journal of Hydrometeorology) have studied the interrelationship between tropical deforestation and drought and shown that deforestation in the Tropical Belt has a massive impacts on rainfall and weather trends in the northern hemisphere. Global Forest Watch map showing forest cover loss since 2010 in the Southern Cardamom mountains. Mongabay.com: What was the process of getting this area gazetted as a protected area? Suwanna Gauntlett: Actually, the process of getting the Southern Cardamoms gazetted has been overly difficult and has required a 14 year-long advocacy and on-the-ground monitoring effort. When Wildlife Alliance arrived in the area in 2002, there were 300 to 600 hectares of rainforest going up in flames every single month. 37 elephants and 12 tigers had been killed in just the few months preceding our initial intervention. There were no rangers, no park headquarters, no ranger stations, no law enforcement at all in the area. It was literally the wild, wild west. Protecting an area with legal protection on paper is one thing, but protecting it on the ground is the most difficult challenge. We started in 2002 with a seemingly insurmountable challenge: we had to provide crisis management, stop the poaching, stop the burning, re-establish central government rule of law over this remote and completely lawless province where everyone was pillaging natural resources for private interests. It is only in 2004 that we started thinking about the long-term process of establishing legal protection for the Southern Cardamoms. Government at national level was very committed at the time and declared a first 140,000 hectare area gazetted as “Protected Forest” along Freeway 48. This was a major achievement, but it still left another 470,000 hectares of vital rainforest without legal protection. The same year, threats to this unprotected section went up by 100 percent: a new law was passed that allowed private companies to purchase rainforest land for industrial-scale agriculture plantations or mining. As soon as this Economic Land Concession law was passed in 2004, the Southern Cardamoms were suddenly up for grabs and we had to fend off one company after another. Pressure from private companies became constant. It was very stressful for Wildlife Alliance. We had to keep our eyes and ears open everywhere and at all times. We knew that permits could be given rapidly and that there would be no transparency letting us know in advance. We had to deploy every single strategy that we could think of and stand steady no matter what. Through persistence and unfailing on-the-ground presence, we fended off 37 Economic Land Concessions over 12 years. This represents saving a surface of rainforest equivalent to two thirds the surface of Yellowstone National Park. These were hard-won victories based on advocacy campaigns ranging from 6 months to 2 years that rallied stakeholders from all social sectors. We succeeded in cancelling exploitation permits of titanium mines, large-scale banana export companies, large-scale livestock production facilities, and industrial sugar cane plantations. We succeeded because of constant hard work. We established continuous presence on the ground to detect any corporate attempts to clear the forest. We cracked down on every bulldozer starting to clear the forest, we followed every individual attempting to take soil samples, we stopped every construction inside the forest. We helped select, train, and equip government rangers across the landscape and prepared them to stop forest clearings, illegal logging, and wildlife poaching. Rainforest in the Southern Cardamom Mountains. Photo by Rhett A. Butler Mongabay.com: What are the major threats to forest and wildlife in the area? Suwanna Gauntlett: The initial threats to the Southern Cardamoms when we arrived in the area were rampant wildlife poaching (37 elephants and 12 tigers were poached in just the few months preceding our initial intervention) along with forest land grabbing for buying and selling (real estate speculation along newly constructed Freeway 48).
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