Potential of Community Forestry in Bhutan to increase carbon stocks and mitigate climate change

Sigyel Delma

doi:10.25907/00959

Bhutan is exploring opportunities to engage with global carbon markets and generate revenue from the sale of carbon stored in its forests. Realizing this potential requires identifying pathways that deliver measurable carbon outcomes while supporting sustainable forest management and local livelihoods. One opportunity is through nature-based solutions (NbS) implemented in community forestry (CF), where well-functioning Community Forest Management Groups (CFMGs) could adopt management practices that enhance carbon sequestration and storage. The 4% of Bhutan’s forests (107,866 ha) currently under CF management provide many essential goods and services but their potential to contribute to carbon markets and climate change mitigation is not well understood and has not been researched. Even the carbon stocks and sequestration rates of these forests are not known. Other major research gaps include lack of knowledge about potential forest carbon pathways, the trade-offs associated with carbon marketing and the policy and management implications of managing community forests for carbon. This thesis aims to address these knowledge gaps and to provide the key elements of a framework for informed policy decisions about Bhutan carbon marketing from a Bhutanese community forestry perspective. This thesis presents an assessment of carbon stocks and sequestration potential of Bhutan’s community forests based on data from the 2015 National Forest Inventory. Results showed that the country’s 839 community forests store 130.3 Mg C ha-1 (107.3–153.2) in the biomass and 52.8 Mg C ha-1 (30.4–75.1) in the soil while they sequester carbon at an annual rate of 0.7 Mg C ha⁻¹ yr⁻¹. The study found that biomass carbon in community forests did not differ from that of non-community forests in Bhutan. In contrast, carbon stocks were lower in community forests than in Forest Management Units in Bhutan and in non-degraded forests in the Indian and Nepal Himalayas. These findings suggest that, with modified management practices, there is considerable potential to increase carbon storage in Bhutan’s community forests. The thesis next explores the option for CFMGs to forgo timber harvests to increase biomass carbon. The carbon break-even price (the amount needed to compensate CFMGs for timber harvests forgone) was calculated using the net revenue forgone and the amount of money generated by selling the additional carbon. Assuming 50% leakage and transaction costs of $US7 MgCO2-1, the carbon break-even price averaged $35 MgCO2-1. Under this scenario, a total amount of $5 million ($45 ha-1), for an annual additional carbon sequestration benefit of 151,012 MgCO2, would need to flow annually to the country’s CFMGs for this forest carbon pathway to be financially viable. Finally, this thesis assesses the land use changes that have taken place in Bhutan over the past several decades and explores the potential to take advantage of these changes to increase forest carbon stocks. Forest cover increased by about 1,100 km² and shrubland by about 2,000 km² during the 25-year period to 2020, mostly at the expense of agricultural land. Analysis of Participatory Rural Appraisal data collected from stakeholders revealed that major recent changes to farming systems. Most are associated with changed animal husbandry practices (large reduction in sheep and cattle numbers and a shift from open-range grazing of local cattle breeds to stall feeding of improved breeds), cessation of shifting cultivation, abandonment of agricultural land and less intensive agricultural practices. An estimated 50-400 ha per village of abandoned grazing land, shifting cultivation areas and other state reserve forest lands are now regrowing to shrublands and forests. These naturally regenerating areas could be managed explicitly for additional carbon sequestration by incorporating them into CF management and protecting them from degrading influences. If each of Bhutan’s 839 is increased by 50 ha, an additional 0.12 million MgCO2 could be sequestered annually, generating a potential annual revenue of about $1.2 million if the additional carbon is sold into the voluntary carbon market. This option, combined with the forest carbon pathway of forgone timber harvests in community forests, provides options for reconsidering CF management in Bhutan as the country pursues its goal of remaining carbon neutral. Overall, this study demonstrated that additional carbon can be sequestered in Bhutan by adopting appropriate forest management practices, albeit with some costs and trade-offs. A conceptual framework was developed that outlines the key components and issues associated with generating and selling forest-based carbon credits. The hope is that this framework will contribute to nascent policy discourses in Bhutan about forest-based carbon markets.

Potential of Community Forestry in Bhutan to increase carbon stocks and mitigate climate change

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