Zambezian and Mopane Woodlands: carbon-based birds

Have just visited in April 2015 a small part of the Zambezian and Mopane Woodlands Ecoregion (AT0725) (see the link for a map and general description): the vicinity of the Lower Zambezi National Park in Zambia and stunning Victoria Falls, on the Zimbabwe side. The ecoregion generally is dominated by the remarkable mopane tree (Calaphospermum mopane), or butterfly tree. Throughout this ecoregion, generally dry and lower-elevation, mopane forms single-species woodlands, among the most distinctive and recognizable ecosystems of southern Africa.

Chris and I were boating on the Zambezi River in Zambia, taking a break from a busy two-week mission of Zambian and international experts, putting together a new project in a part of this ecoregion to the northwest, the Luangwa Valley of Zambia. With the lofty title of “Zambia Integrated Forest Landscape Program”, I’m inspired that it is about saving the birds of the mopane woodlands. But only I know that; to everybody else on the mission, it is about reducing carbon emissions and improving livelihoods of poor people. To Chris, whose high-level job is all about negotiating REDD+ in global fora, it is about piloting innovative concepts for reducing land-based carbon emissions.

What is REDD+? It’s a very simple idea: that rich countries pay poor countries for emitting less carbon from forests (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) and for storing more carbon (this is the “+”) in their forestlands. For 10 years the world has been furiously negotiating how this will work and although we are getting close, we still don’t have a deal. This simple idea turns out to be incredibly complex in the technical details. What is most difficult however is what is always most difficult: making sure the money is actually coughed up.

So we still don’t have final agreement on the rules on REDD+, which people like Chris spend their days jetting from city to city trying to figure out. It is incredibly important. Carbon emissions from forests, caused mostly by deforestation, account for nearly a quarter of global carbon emissions. Furthermore, putting carbon back into forests is one of the cheapest and most efficient options that we have to take carbon out of the atmosphere. We have already lost the battle on climate change, as we are now inexorably moving toward a global temperature change of several degrees C this century. But if we want to minimize the extent of the developing disaster which is upon us, we simply cannot do it without REDD+ playing its role.

In the meantime, without a global agreement to allow money to flow, players like the World Bank (backed up by wealthy donor countries) are stepping in to pay for this carbon in various trial schemes to help figure out how this will all work. The project in Zambia, once it is on its way, will eventually pay out $30 to $40 million for carbon that Zambians will store in their forests. My specific role is to help to add in some extra $10 million of funds (from the GEF) to help maximize global benefits, particularly for biodiversity.

So what does this have to do with birding in ecoregions?! The birds of the Zambezian and Mopane Woodlands Ecoregion live in forests. Outside of protected areas (and increasingly even inside them), poor people are chopping down these forests so they can grow maize and make charcoal. I would do the same thing if I were in their shoes. They do this because the forest does not generate enough kwachas for them. Our project will try all kinds of different things to give the forests more economic value (through tourism, sustainable forestry, beehives, etc.). One of those mix of ideas is to pay for carbon to be stored in forests.

Those C payments will not be very large (only a few $/metric ton of C) because tragically and blindly, the world does not yet give much economic value to carbon. On their own, they can’t tip the scales, but those extra payments to local farmers and to other actors in this complex dynamic of deforestation, will hopefully make a difference. In some areas, not all, standing forests will seem a little more attractive to a poor peasant than a smoldering charcoal pit, and when that happens, bird populations in this part of the ecoregion will hang on a bit longer!