Climate Change Mitigation Through Reduced-Impact Logging and the Hierarchy of Production Forest Management

The proposed hierarchy of production forest management provides modus operandi for forest concessions to move incrementally towards Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) via Reduced-Impact Logging (RIL) and forest certification. Financial benefits are sourced in the “Additionality Zone”, financing the rise in the hierarchy and offsetting prohibitive forest and carbon certification costs. RIL carbon registration components consist of developing credible baseline, additionality and leakage arguments around the business-as-usual scenario through the quantification of historical forest inventory and production records, forest infrastructure records and damage to the residual forest. If conventional harvesting is taken as a baseline, research indicates RIL can potentially reduce emissions by approximately 1–7 tCO2e ha−1yr−1. The current market price of USD $7.30 per tCO2e may result in over USD $50 ha−1yr−1 in additional revenue, well above the estimated USD $3–5 ha−1 in carbon transaction costs. Concessions in Sabah Malaysia demonstrate the financial viability of long-term RIL and certification planning. This may act as a basis for future planned forest management activities involving RIL, carbon and forest certification through the hierarchy of production forest management.