Presentations

Local participation in REDD+ Measuring, Reporting and Verification (PMRV) Manual Boissiere, CIRAD & CIFOR

The PMRV team presented its results udring a webinar organised by WWF (WWF Forest and Climate learning session #45) on Wednesday 14th October. The presentation, "Local participation in REDD+ Measuring, Reporting and Verification (PMRV)", can be watched on Youtube.
From Forestry System to Participatory MRV for REDD+ Andhika Vega Praputra, Carola Hofstee and Dian Ekowati

The presentation describes research on the forestry reporting system in three provinces of Indonesia: Central Java, West Kalimantan and Papua. This includes government systems (forestry extension) for the three provinces; the government owned company in Central Java, and a private concession company in Papua. The research tried to answer questions on the reporting system, such as who is involved, what data are collected and reported, and how data reporting flows from the site to the national level. The results of this research will be used to give recommendations for the development of a Participatory Measuring, Reporting and Verification (PMRV) system to be used in REDD+.
Community measuring and reporting child health, and then trees? An example from Indonesia Dian Ekowati, Carola Hofstee and Andhika Vega Praputra

The presentation describes the research, which aimed to provide lessons learned from the healthcare system for possible participatory measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) in REDD+. From the healthcare sector we learned that community measuring and reporting does exist and has proven to be effective and sustainable, despite the lack of financial incentives for volunteers. One of the reasons for the system's effectiveness and sustainability is village volunteers' interest to sustain the system, among other reasons.
Assessing changes in social and ecological systems with local communities: examples from Indonesia Manuel Boissière and Douglas Sheil

Changes in social and ecological systems can be complex and multifaceted. Monitoring and understanding such changes can lead to better-informed decisions. Yet there are many challenges including the need to find suitable methods, and the costs, skills, knowledge and commitment required to implement them.

We are particularly concerned with the state and resilience of tropical forests, both now and in the future. Participatory monitoring with local people can provide grounded information on changes in their forest, and their relation to it, and the threats that they perceive. Such participatory approaches offer various additional benefits such as ability through training to assess and report changes in forest state to decision makers.

Our research looks at the conditions under which local participation in assessing forest resilience and changes are feasible. Our study asks: What do local people know about the changes in their forested landscapes and other natural resources? In the context of those changes, what control do local communities have on their territory? What are their interest, skills, and availability for participating in monitoring?

We focus on one specific topic, forest MRV (Measuring, Reporting, Verifying), to adapt the MRV methods to different local situations, to make it effective, efficient, and sustainable. In this conference we will share preliminary results from case studies in three provinces in Indonesia (Papua, West Kalimantan, and Central Java). We will compare the conditions of participation of local people in measurement and reporting of changes in forest cover and quality in these three provinces.
Participatory MRV: Addressing Socio-ecological Context and Scale Manuel Boissière, Guillaume Beaudoin, Walker DePuy, Lina Farida, Mary Elizabeth Felker, Waheed Ullah, Indah Waty

Managing forests sustainably in light of expanding threats from climate change, deforestation, and others is of the utmost importance, whether for biodiversity conservation, livelihood security, or climate change mitigation. Accurately assessing forest changes resulting from these threats is the baseline requirement for successful forest management. Three components are widely seen as essential for achieving such assessments: Measurement, Reporting, and Verification (MRV). The interest around the world for the Reduction of Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) as an instrument for climate change mitigation, and the need for accurate and scalable accounting of forest carbon stocks, make the importance of MRV practices only more apparent. At the same time, community participation in resource measuring, monitoring, and management is increasingly seen as a scientifically efficient, cost-effective, and equitable way to employ such practices.

Our research aimed at advancing the design and implementation of Participatory MRV (PMRV) across three sites along a forest degradation gradient in Indonesia (Central Java, West Kalimantan, and Papua). This work gives attention to both the local-to-national scalar needs of MRV, as well as examines how local social and ecological contexts might clarify, complement, or complicate such needs. By combining 1) governance analyses of existing, multi-scalar MRV systems in forestry and health; 2) GIS/RS work comparing overlaps and gaps between satellite imagery and participatory maps of forest change; and 3) social research focusing on enabling conditions for local participation in MRV activities, we are able to be attentive to the possible multiple benefits from PMRV (carbon mitigation, biodiversity conservation, livelihood security), as well as who the multiple stakeholders (communities, NGOs, governments) and what the scales (local, regional, national) should be to make any such system's design and implementation both feasible and sustainable. Ultimately, this research will aid academics and practitioners alike by illuminating possibilities and challenges for PMRV as seen in three socio-ecologically different sites.
Characterizing Deforestation and Forest Degradation in the Tropical Rainforest of Kalimantan, Indonesia Serge Claudio Rafanoharana, Gilang Aria Seta, Arief Wijaya, Manuel Boissière

Recent studies show that tropical forests suffer more deforestation than other forested regimes. This is mainly due to conversion of the forests to agriculture land uses, fuel wood/charcoal production and mining. The focus of this study is to identify different forest structure (i.e. forest mosaic, young secondary forest, old secondary forest, and pristine forest) resulted from different scales of deforestation and forest degradation.

In this study focusing in tropical lowland forest of West Kalimantan, Indonesia, we used time series and multi-spectral optical data from different sensors. Prior to land cover classification, pre-processing of satellite data was undertaken to correct atmospheric disturbances and terrain effects.

Unlike many studies, this study combines spectral data and spatial information to assess disturbance on forest cover from anthropogenic factors. We assessed the performance of spectral reflectance, vegetation indices (i.e. NDVI and EVI), common band ratios, and spatial information from co-occurrence texture matrices for improving the accuracy of land cover analysis. Several groups of classification iterations were tested to find the best possible combination which can improve the reliability of the resulted map. Comparison between parametric and non-parametric supervised classifications, based on Maximum Likelihood algorithm and Support Vector Machine (SVM) method, were experimented. Ground truth data were collected through an extensive field survey during September - October 2013 taking over 450 sample points to independently train the classification models and to validate the classification accuracy. Historical land use change map from the period of 2000 - 2012 was acquired from the Ministry of Forestry of Indonesia and was used as additional information to indicate the forest regeneration stages.

This research was developed around the following objectives: reflectance signature analysis of different vegetation characteristics, accuracy assessment of spatial data classification, and the possibility to estimate carbon stocks over different forest successional stages by linking the land cover with available biomass allometric equations developed from similar forest ecosystem.

The following presentations were given at a small seminar at Gadjah Mada University (Universitas Gadjah Mada – UGM) Faculty of Forestry, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, on 11th December 2013.

Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR)