Management of the Cusuco Cloud Forests in Honduras

The main objective of the forest research programme in Honduras is to complete standard surveying effort on a range of biological groups from 150+ sites, spread across the rainforest and cloud forest of Cusuco National Park. The Operation Wallacea teams produce an annual ‘state of Cusuco National Park’ report, to assist with its management. In addition, social science teams work in villages in the park’s buffer zone, to assess the village economies and social structures, and how the local people interact with the park. Plans have also been proposed for improving ecotourism usage of the Park.

From 2008 management of the expedition logistics was devolved to a Honduran NGO (Expediciones y Servicios Ambientales de Cusuco - ESAC), so that the facilities built up by Operation Wallacea in the park can be used outside the Operation Wallacea season. This will increase ecotourism income for the buffer zone communities. 

The data gathered by the Opwall teams are being used to support an application for funding under the Reduction in Emissions of greenhouse gases from Deferred Deforestation (REDD) scheme. This scheme that was outlined at the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference aims to provide a mechanism for tackling the 15% of greenhouse gas emissions caused by deforestation. A total of $3.5 billion has been pledged by developed countries (Norway, France, Germany, US etc) to form a fund to support governments or NGO's to prevent deforestation.

One of the problems with the current carbon credit payment system is that it does not reflect the varying economic pressures on the land. As a result, landowners and communities are wary of locking up their forests for long periods of time because the marginal costs of protecting the forests may change significantly over that period. Moreover the costs of protecting forests vary enormously based on opportunity costs of alternative land uses. Thus having a standardised international price for carbon sequestration per hectare of land may result in considerable overpayment to landowners/occupiers where the alternative uses are not likely to generate so much income whilst in other cases the payments will be too small to prevent deforestation. Also it is better to concentrate funding at forest blocks under high risk of deforestation - forest blocks on the edge of a continuous stand of protected forest are generally at higher risk than those deep within the core zone.

In addition the reason why governments and multi-nationals are investing in the REDD scheme is not just to prevent deforestation, but the implied benefit this has on biodiversity protection. Yet in the majority of cases data on the biodiversity of key taxa in the forests being protected by the proposed REDD payments are not available, so the performance of the REDD payments in protecting biodiversity cannot be assessed. The Cusuco application is a proposal is to use small scale examples of forest protection where the marginal costs of protecting the forests can be assessed on an annual basis. Opwall has 4 years worth of biodiversity data for a range of taxa from 150 sites across the Park that can be used to set biodiversity change criteria. Cusuco is an excellent example of cloud forest with a recently discovered tree that is a new genus of tree to science and 8 species of amphibians and reptiles that are Critically Endangered.

The main problem with this model is how do you assess the marginal value of each 100ha block of forest without creating collusion between landowners/occupiers to inflate the value. Opwall has been developing some ideas based on the work of environmental economist Paul Ferraro (author of the paper on direct payments for conservation which was the inspiration for both the Lambusango and Kaledupa projects run by the Trust). One Paul Ferraro example had landowners in Java with small farms submitting closed bids in a series of rounds to determine the 50% WTA (Willingness to Accept) value for implementing the conservation measures. In this case the repeated bidding allowed the farmers to learn from their experience in previous bids and in the final round (which was identified as such) to pitch it at a level where they had a chance of winning. Note only a percentage of the farmers were successful in gaining the funding so there had to be losers to enable this method to work.

The Cusuco example is a lot more complicated and since it is essential to gain protection of the whole forest (not just the forest blocks with the lowest bid prices) the scheme to be used has to be structured differently. The method proposed divides the Park into two parts - the core zone and buffer zone. Because of illegal clearances in parts of the buffer zone and even in small parts of the edges of the core zone the frontline for conservation is in fact the core zone. The core zone is all government land and is managed by ICF. It is illegal for surrounding communities to log or hunt in these core zone forests so in theory their opportunity loss cost is zero and we could hardly make payments to communities for not doing something illegal (it would create a system similar to the protection rackets run in some Honduran cities to ensure your house or business is not burgled!!). However in order to enforce this, ICF need to employ rangers, have communication systems and processing systems for prosecuting infringements discovered. The true costs of protecting these forests is therefore the patrolling and enforcement costs and the most cost effective way of doing this as a top down approach would be to define the performance criteria needed to appoint an organisation to protect the core zone forests (eg they would be paid on success in preventing de-forestation and ensuring the various biodiversity parameters agreed were achieved). Payments would be reduced for any loss of forest cover or reduction in the agreed biodiversity performance criteria. These costs could be estimated by requesting sealed bids from a number of organisations.

Once this had been achieved though there would be a twist in the system. Each of the communities with adjacent core zone forest would be asked to bid for how much they would require to ensure the 100ha blocks allocated as their responsibility could be protected to the same performance criteria as for the main bids. Those that bid below the per 100ha value estimated from the market tender would then be given the responsibility for protecting their adjacent blocks. The costs paid each year would be auctioned and those communities that had bid too high in the first year would be given the opportunity to bid again so that eventually all the communities as they learn how low they have to make the bid to be successful would be involved in the protection of their adjacent forest. Doing it this way means that from day 1 the whole of the core zone is protected and that subsequent payments in future years actually go down as the communities accept the need to bid below the central cost value for protection. As soon as the change criteria (percentage change permitted under the linear spectral unmixing surveys in each 100ha block and the percentage change permitted in the various biodiversity criteria assessed from the annual Opwall surveys) are agreed the bidding process for the top down policing costs can be got underway. Once the successful bidder is appointed on the basis that they would receive payments from the carbon credit payments then they could then start the process of obtaining sealed bids for management of the forest blocks adjacent to each community. The community bids would have to be made through village co-operatives with 90% plus membership (these are already in existence in some villages) so that within 6 months those villages that had these co-operatives and who had successfully bid would be receiving the performance related payments.

The buffer zone however, is a different problem. In the buffer zone the land ownership seems to be mainly in the hands of a few wealthy landowners but with some small landowners as well. In theory the land in the buffer zone irrespective of ownership cannot be de-forested unless a permit is obtained from ICF. So once again we have a situation where the opportunity loss is technically zero but in practice there are costs of patrolling and enforcement to ensure this happens. This would be tackled in a similar way to the core zone - the bid process for the core zone would also require the costing of policing the buffer zone forests. The lowest combined bid for the patrolling of both the core and buffer zone forests would be accepted. Once again though once this price had been established the owners/occupiers of each 100ha block would be offered the opportunity to bid to police their own blocks and be paid to do so if their bids were under the costs of the central patrolling system.