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Climate Change Pillar: Sustainable Landscapes
 Researchers survey ape nests threatened by deforestation in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Photo: Cricket Sanz, WCS
Carbon can be sequestered (i.e. stored) in plants and soil. Forests, wetlands, grasslands, and agricultural systems store a significant portion of global carbon stocks. Depending on how landscapes are managed, they can either be “sinks” or “sources” of carbon. Thus, sustainable management of landscapes is essential to reducing global atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases. Forests are of particular importance because they provide valuable natural resources for local people, are home to much of the world’s biological diversity, and play a key role in carbon sequestration. Deforestation is both a local problem and a global problem because deforestation releases stored carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere (estimated at 14-20% of annual global greenhouse gas emissions).
USAID’s funding for managing landscapes for climate change mitigation comes from a variety of sources, such as biodiversity and agriculture, but the dedicated Sustainable Landscapes pillar is focused on forests. To support its commitment to forests, USAID helped develop the U.S. Government strategy for REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation), released in November 2010, and will play a major role in its implementation. USAID is also working on large scale forest-based climate change mitigation through its support for developing country-led Low Emission Development Strategies (LEDS). USAID together with the U.S. State Department, and in cooperation with other U.S agencies, is supporting the SilvaCarbon (PDF 137K) program to enhance capacity worldwide for monitoring and managing forest and terrestrial carbon. To systematically estimate how its forest programs are reducing greenhouse gas emissions, USAID worked with Winrock to develop the Forest Carbon Calculator (PDF 1MB) tool. USAID has a long history of supporting sustainable forestry with climate change benefits. One example is the CARPE program in Central Africa.
Central African Regional Program for the Environment (CARPE)
CARPE is a long-term USAID initiative to address deforestation and biodiversity loss in the Congo Basin of Central Africa. One of the least developed regions in the world, the Congo Basin holds massive expanses of closed canopy tropical forests that are second in area only to the Amazon Basin. Unsustainable natural resources extraction, shifting cultivation practices, poverty, and urban expansion at the forest margin pose increasing threats to this globally significant forest resource. CARPE is implemented by a team of U.S.-based NGOs and U.S. government agencies, and works in collaboration with government agencies, regional, national and local partners in Cameroon, Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, and Sao Tome and Principe.
Maintaining the region’s carbon “sink” potential is a key objective of USAID’s climate change program. CARPE’s work helps address this key objective. With its vast forest reserves, Central Africa is the most important African sub region for storing carbon and mitigating carbon dioxide emissions. The CARPE Forest Landscape Management Program aims to create and execute on the ground land use management plans coupled with a satellite imagery monitoring system, supported by full stakeholder participation and good governance tools. In doing so, CARPE identifies ways to limit deforestation and retain the forest as a significant global carbon sink. For more information, visit the CARPE website.
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