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International Publications - Mitigation Options in Forestry, Land-Use Change and Biomass Burning in Africa
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By Willy R.L. Makundi
Environmental Energy Technologies Division
Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory
Mitigation Options in Forestry, Land-Use Change and Biomass Burning in Africa (40 KB PDF) was produced at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory with support from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency through the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC03-76SF00098. The report's Abstract and Introduction are available below.
PDF files are in Adobe Acrobat 4.0 (*.pdf) format; the required Reader is available at no cost from Adobe Systems.  Abstract
Mitigation options to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and sequester carbon in land use sectors are describe in some detail. The paper highlights those options in the forestry sector, which are more relevant to different parts of Africa. It briefly outlines a bottom-up methodological framework for comprehensively assessing mitigation options in land use sectors. This method emphasizes the application of end-use demand projections to construct a baseline and mitigation scenarios and explicitly addresses the carbon storage potential on land and in wood products, as well as use of wood to substitute for fossil fuels. Cost-effectiveness indicators for ranking mitigation options are proposed, including those, which account for non-carbon monetary benefits such as those derived from forest products, as well as opportunity cost of pursuing specific mitigation option. The paper finally surveys the likely policies, barriers and incentives to implement such mitigation options in African countries. Introduction
The biomass sector provides the most important near-term opportunities for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) missions and sequestering carbon in Africa. In this paper, we briefly describe assessment of mitigation options in forestry, agriculture and other land-use such as range and grasslands. Mitigation options as used here refer to those measures and policies which can lead to a reduction in the emission of greenhouse gases from the biomass sectors and/or through increased absorption and storage of carbon, both in perennial vegetation, detritus, soils, and in long-term biomass products. In most land- use changes involving decomposition and oxidation, GHG may be emitted. They include carbon dioxide (CO2 ), carbon monoxide (CO), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), oxides of nitrogen (NOx) and other non-methane hydrocarbons (NMHC). Although CO2 forms the bulk of these gases emitted in the biomass sectors, it can be reabsorbed by vegetation via the process of photosynthesis and through organic matter eplenishment in soils. On the other hand, the emitted trace gases accumulate in the atmosphere for their entire residence period.
It is estimated that net carbon emissions from the biomass sectors amount to 1.6 +/- 1.0 billion tons per year, most of which originate from lower latitudes, and that forests from the mid and high latitudes have a net sequestration of 0.7 +/- 0.4 billion tons per year1. Africa’s share of anthropogenic emission of greenhouse gases has been estimated at about 4% of global net emissions, adding to about 0.3 billion tons of carbon per year, mostly from forestry and land-use changes2. Despite the relatively low contribution to the atmospheric accumulation of GHG, Africa has a large potential of increasing the emissions from land-use changes due to persistent dependence on primary resources for ubsistence farming and over dependence on biomass as a primary source of energy. The Zaire basin alone has a large reservoir of carbon estimated to exceed 20 billion tons. Under current or accelerated rate of depletion of the region's forests, most of this carbon can be released in a few decades. On the other hand, Africa has a large expanse of arable land, which could be used to undertake various mitigation measures intended to increase the stock of carbon stored on land.
The purpose of this paper is to examine the likely mitigation options in the biomass sector in the Africa region and briefly describe the approach used by the participating countries whose work is presented in this volume. The most applicable options for the region include forest protection and conservation, improved forest management, the use of improved cook stoves, short- and long-rotation forest plantations, agroforestry and natural regeneration, and the expanded use of sustainably procured timber and non-timber wood products. These options are described below in the context of their viability in the region. Finally, the paper briefly explores the policy instruments, incentives and barriers for implementation of such options in Africa.
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