Biodiversity footprint of companies - Summary report

Companies are becoming increasingly aware of their impact on biodiversity and natural capital. This may result from their implicit dependence on natural capital, from increasingly more critical consumers, or from the genuine concern of company managers and owners. Consequently, companies have an increasing need for tools to enable them to gain insight into their impact on biodiversity, and to measure and assess the effects of measures to limit this impact. The Natural Captains project of the Platform Biodiversity, Ecosystems & Economy (Platform BEE) is stimulating companies to translate thinking and working with natural capital into tangible actions. This means making visible the impact of their activities on biodiversity and natural capital in terms of their biodiversity footprint. One way to assess a company’s impact on biodiversity is to measure the biodiversity footprint of their current activities and possibly also to compare this footprint with that of alternative measures

Costs and benefits of a more sustainable production of tropical timber

This study is part of the TEEB (The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity) study of trade chains, and assessed the impact of harvesting tropical timber on ecosystem services and the costs and benefits of more sustainable production. The costs of implementation and the benefits from increased ecosystem services levels were assessed for two alternatives to conventional selective logging (CL), sustainable forest management (SFM) and forest plantation. The SFM alternative involves certified forest management implementing reduced impact logging techniques. The forest plantation alternative involves high-yield plantations that have a larger impact on ecosystem services than CL on the actual plantation area, but require only an equivalent of 11-42% of the CL area due to the higher yields per unit of area, and thus allows a larger area of primary forest to be conserved. The majority of Dutch imports of tropical timbers are from South America and South East Asia. We conducted separate analyses for South America and South East Asia to account for regional differences in terms of logging practices, timber yields and the extent and value of ecosystem service

Long-term responses of populations and communities of trees to selective logging in tropical rain forests in Guyana

Since only a small area of Guyana's forest can be effectively protected and because timber harvesting is an important source of income, logged forests will play an important role in the conservation of biodiversity in Guyana. Selective logging, in which only a few trees per hectare are harvested and after which forest remains available, is potentially a good way to utilise the forest without destroying it. In Guyana hard wood from selective logging is an important source of income. As in other tropical countries, sustainable forest management should result in sustained timber yields over long periods of time to provide lasting revenues and to secure livelihoods, while on the other hand also diversity should be conserved as much as possible. To be able to define criteria for sustainable forest management, information on the long-term effects of logging is needed. Selective logging creates openings in the forest canopy, which results in increased light availability in the forest understorey. As a consequence of this increased light availability some tree species (the pioneers) are able to grow much faster. On the long term this may result in changes in species composition of the forest. The aim of the investigations described in this thesis was to determine the long-term effects of logging on tree population dynamics, forest composition and tree diversity and to evaluate the sustainability of alternative forest management scenarios for both future timber yields and biodiversity conservation. To investigate these long-term effects, a field study was done in logged and non-logged forests in Guyana and additionally a forest simulation model was developed to evaluate different management scenarios. This population dynamics model simulates growth, mortality and recruitment of trees and makes projections of forest composition and available hard wood in the course of decades. The results of the field study showed that increased light availability after logging is especially advantageous for pioneer species. The abundance of inherently slow growing tree species decreased, but recovered again in the course of years after logging. Model simulations showed, however, that selective logging did not severely affect forest composition. Even in simulations of the most intensive way of logging (12 trees ha-1, every 25 years) forest composition remained rather intact. This is probably due to the fact that in forests in central Guyana, pioneer species are very rare and thus will not easily dominate the forest after logging. After logging once using high harvest intensities of 12 trees ha-1, it took, however, more than 100 years before harvestable timber volumes were comparable again with a baseline (non-logging) situation. For slow growing tree species it even took more than 160 years after logging before the abundance of stems was comparable again with the baseline situation. Projected recovery periods were, however, substantially longer than the currently in Guyana advised length of felling cycle of 60 years. Highest total timber yields were achieved if trees were harvested every 25 years using high harvest intensities. At the same time this approach also resulted in a fast depletion of the available commercial timber volumes in the forest and thus reduced timber yields. The results of the investigations in this thesis can be used to determine criteria for sustainable forest management in Guyana

Competing claims on land for food and biodiversity; Drivers, impacts and responses

This document consists of two papers that address the issue of competition on land for food and biodiver-sity. The increasing world population and the overall rising global wealth call for an increasing demand for food and energy. Agricultural production has to increase to feed present and future generations, but also with sufficient energy, fibre and ecosystem services such as clean water and air, next to biodiversity and recreation. Biodiversity, referring to the diversity of all forms of life within an ecosystem, biome or of plan-et Earth, is also an important source of food security: over 1 billion people rely on forest products for food and income, and forest products provide an important safety net as harvests of agricultural commodities fall short. The two brief essays were initiated by the Ministry of EL&I (Directorate Nature and Environment) responsible for the implementation of the EU biodiversity strategy, but also accountable for preventing the possible trade-off between biodiversity protection and food securit

Carbon debt : inzichtelijk maken van maatschappelijke risico's van het opnemen van carbon debt vereisten

In het Energieakkoord is afgesproken dat meestook van biomassa in kolencentrales niet meer wordt dan 25 PetaJoule. Als onderdeel van de totale biomassa is zo’n 3,5 miljoen ton hout nodig. De mee te stoken biomassa zal aanvullend op de NTA8080-eisen moeten voldoen aan ‘duurzaamheidseisen voor koolstofschuld, indirecte landgebruikseffecten (ILUC) en duurzaam bosbeheer (FSC)’. In dit rapport wordt verkend, in hoeverre de duurzaamheidseisen genoemd in het Energieakkoord, risico’s op een carbon debt al uitsluiten en welke biomassa-stromen additioneel uitgesloten worden door een carbon debt eis. Ook zijn mogelijke procesrisico’s geïdentificeerd die discussie over carbon debt kan opleveren voor de verdere uitwerking van de afspraken uit het Energieakkoord

Greenhouse gas reporting for the LULUCF sector in the Netherlands : methodological background, update 2016

This report provides a complete methodological description and background information of the DutchNational System for Greenhouse gas Reporting of the LULUCF sector. It provides detailed description of themethodologies, activity data and emission factors that were used. Additionally it gives a table-by-tableelaboration of the choices and motivations for filling the CRF tables for KP-LULUC

Species distribution modeling in the tropics: problems, potentialities, and the role of biological data for effective species conservation

In this paper we aim to investigate the problems and potentialities of species distribution modeling (SDM) as a tool for conservation planning and policy development and implementation in tropical regions. We reviewed 123 studies published between 1995 and 2007 in five of the leading journals in ecology and conservation, and examined two tropical case studies in which distribution modeling is currently being applied to support conservation planning. We also analyzed the characteristics of data typically used for fitting models within the specific context of modeling tree species distribution in Central America. The results showed that methodological papers outnumbered reports of SDMs being used in an applied context for setting conservation priorities, particularly in the tropics. Most applications of SDMs were in temperate regions and biased towards certain organisms such as mammals and birds. Studies from tropical regions were less likely to be validated than those from temperate regions. Unpublished data from two major tropical case studies showed that those species that are most in need of conservation actions, namely those that are the rarest or most threatened, are those for which SDM is least likely to be useful. We found that only 15% of the tree species of conservation concern in Central America could be reliably modelled using data from a substantial source (Missouri Botanical Garden VAST database). Lack of data limits model validation in tropical areas, further restricting the value of SDMs. We concluded that SDMs have a great potential to support biodiversity conservation in the tropics, by supporting the development of conservation strategies and plans, identifying knowledge gaps, and providing a tool to examine the potential impacts of environmental change. However, for this potential to be fully realized, problems of data quality and availability need to be overcome. Weaknesses in current biological datasets need to be systematically addressed, by increasing collection of field survey data, improving data sharing and increasing structural integration of data sources. This should include use of distributed databases with common standards, referential integrity, and rigorous quality control. Integration of data management with SDMs could significantly add value to existing data resources by improving data quality control and enabling knowledge gaps to be identified