CHAPTER V CARBON SEQUESTRATION POTENTIAL OF THE RESERVED FORESTS OF KANYAKUMARI DISTRICT

Transcription

1 26. Singh P P, Exploring biodiversity and climate change benefits of community-based forest management, Global Environmental Change, Vol.18, No. 3, 2008, pp State of Forest Reports, Forest Survey of India, CHAPTER V CARBON SEQUESTRATION POTENTIAL OF THE RESERVED FORESTS OF KANYAKUMARI DISTRICT 5.0 INTRODUCTION Forests play a very significant role in the dynamics of global carbon cycle and management of forests for arresting CO 2 from the atmosphere is of policy importance. Forest ecosystem absorb large amounts of CO 2 from the atmosphere via photosynthesis, and major fraction of assimilated carbon is stored above the ground and below ground biomass, litter, and soil. In response to the increasing concern about global climate change, projects for reducing GHG emissions by sources and for their removal by sinks are being implemented worldwide (Sathaye et al, 1999). The terrestrial ecosystem is a major biological scrubber of atmospheric carbon dioxide that can absorb carbon dioxide from atmosphere and moving into the physiological system and biomass of the plants, and finally into the soil is the only practical way of removing large volumes of the major greenhouse gas, CO 2

2 from the atmosphere into the biological system (Ramachandran et al, 2007). It is estimated that carbon storage capacity of tropical forests is between 1.9 and 4.1 Gt C (Joseph et al, 2010). The national carbon accounting system helps to develop policy and guidelines for greenhouse gas emission mitigation by sink activity land based systems, which reduce the scientific uncertainties related with it. However, to analyse how much carbon mitigation could be achieved. It is necessary to quantify the present role of forests to the GHG budgets and which is important in view of the obligation placed by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (1992) on the signatory nations to provide a periodic update of carbon flows and stocks in the atmosphere (Haripriya, 2003). Small changes in the capacity of forests to remove carbon from the atmosphere by photosynthesis, or return it to the atmosphere by respiration, or store it in wood and soils greatly affect the distribution of carbon between the terrestrial and atmospheric reservoirs (DeLucia and Moore, 2005). Carbon sequestration varies depending upon the nature of forests. Old growth forests are expected to have large stocks of carbon with limited potential for carbon sequestration since net biomass growth is negligible. A young forest, on the other hand, will have low stocks of carbon but large carbon uptake due to rapid growth of young trees (Stainback and Alavalapati, 2002). A complementary

3 approach towards solving the global carbon budget is to directly monitor specific land carbon pools (Lewis et al, 2009). Estimation of forest growing stock, a key indicator of forest health and productivity is necessary to developmental policies and strategies for sustainable use of forest resources. The growing stock estimates help to quantify the forest biomass and thereby to assess the carbon storage of forests and assist the policy makers on climate change related issues (SFR, 2011). The forest carbon sequestration of Kanyakumari district is not yet assessed and studied separately due to the diversified nature of forests of this district. In this context, the present chapter is devoted to assess the carbon sequestration potential of the forests of Kanyakumari district. 5.1 FORESTS OF KANYAKUMARI DISTRICT The forests of Kanyakumari district are classified into 14 types according to Champion and Seth Classification. They are (i) Southern hill-top tropical evergreen forests, (ii) West coast tropical evergreen forests, (iii) West coast semievergreen forests, (iv) Moist teak forests, (v) Slightly moist teak forests, (vi) Southern moist mixed deciduous forests, (vii) Dry teak forests, (viii) Southern dry mixed deciduous forests, (ix) Dry savannah forests, (x) Carnatic umbrella thorn

4 forests, (xi) Southern thorn forests, (xii) Southern thorn scrub, (xiii) Southern subtropical hill forests and (xiv) Ochlandra reed breaks. These forest types come under the broad categories of (a) Tropical wet evergreen forests, (ii) Tropical semi-evergreen forests, (iii) Tropical moist deciduous forests, (iv) Tropical dry deciduous forests, (v) Tropical thorn and (vi) Sub-tropical broadleaved hill forests, with respective share in the forest area is illustrated in Figure 5.1. According to the above broad classification the carbon sequestration potential of the forests of Kanyakumari district is estimated in this chapter. Figure 5.1 Broad categories of forests in Kanyakumari district

5 Data and Data Source The present chapter entirely depends on secondary data. The required information and data are collected from various reports on Kanyakumari Wildlife Sanctuary and State of Forest Reports of India. Methodology The 14 forests types which are prevailing in Kanyakumari district as mentioned above were grouped into six broad categories. The reserved forests of Kanyakumari district and the existence of major forest types in that particular reserved forest were identified with the reports of Kanyakumari Wildlife Sanctuary. The reserved forest which had more than one type of forests was divided according to the existence of different forest types and equal importance

6 was given to each type of forest. Then the area of the reserved forest was multiplied by per hectare annual biomass increment of the respective forest types (Lal and Singh, 2000). And 50 percentage of the annual biomass increment was taken as carbon sequestration. Finally it was multiplied by 3.67 to get the annual CO 2 uptake of the forests. The estimated values of all the reserved forests in Kanyakumari division are added together to get the value for the entire forests of the district. TABLE 5.1 FOREST TYPES EXISTING IN THE RESERVED FORESTS OF KANYAKUMARI DISTRICT WITH RESPECTIVE AREA Sl. No Reserved Forest Division Forest Type Area* (in ha) Total Area of RF (in ha)

7 1. Therkkumalai Tropical dry deciduous East 2. Therkkumalai Tropical dry deciduous West 3. Thadagamalai Tropical moist deciduous Poigaimalai Tropical moist deciduous Mahendragiri Tropical dry deciduous Tropical thorn Sub-tropical broadleaved hill Velimalai Tropical moist deciduous Tropical dry deciduous Veerapuli Tropical wet evergreen Tropical semi-evergreen Tropical moist deciduous Sub-tropical broadleaved hill Kilamalai Tropical semi-evergreen Tropical moist deciduous Tropical dry deciduous Thodalikadu Tropical wet evergreen Asambu Tropical wet evergreen Tropical moist deciduous Tropical dry deciduous Total Source: Report on Kanyakumari Wildlife Sanctuary, * The Reserved Forests having more than one type of forest, the area is equally divided between different forest types From the table it is clear that the forests of Kanyakumari district are predominantly tropical forests. The reserved forest divisions of Kanyakumari district has more than one type of forest because of varied climate and soil features. The district has hectares of reserved forests under 10 reserved forest divisions. The distribution of different forest types in the study area is shown in table 5.1. It is understood that the Veerapuli Reserved Forest accounts ( hectares) the largest area in Kanyakumari district and it is followed by Asambu

8 Reserved Forest ( hectares), Kilamalai Reserved Forest ( hectares), Mahendragiri Reserved Forests ( hectares) and other Reserved Forests accounts the remaining area. Sl. No TABLE 5.2 CARBON SEQUESTRATION POTENTIAL OF THE RESERVED FORESTS OF KANYAKUMARI DISTRICT Forest Type 1. Tropical dry deciduous 2. Tropical moist deciduous 3. Tropical thorn 4. Sub-tropical broadleaved Area (in ha) Annual biomass increment (t/ha)* Annual Biomass Growth (t C) Annual Carbon Sequestration (t C) Total CO 2 intake (t CO 2 )

9 hill 5. Tropical wet evergreen 6. Tropical semievergreen Total * Source: Lal and Singh (2000). From table 5.2 it is clear that the carbon sequestration potential of the reserved forests of Kanyakumari district is tonnes per annum. The annual carbon sequestration potential of different forest types are: Tropical dry deciduous ( tonnes), Tropical moist deciduous ( tonnes), Tropical thorn forests ( tonnes), Sub-tropical broad leaved hill forests ( tonnes), Tropical wet evergreen forests ( tonnes) and Tropical semi evergreen ( tonnes). The total CO 2 intake of the reserved forests of Kanyakumari district is tonnes per annum. 5.2 CARBON SEQUESTRATION BY THE EXISTING FORESTS OF TAMIL NADU Tamil Nadu has square kilometers of forest area which is only of the geographical area of 1, 30,058 square kilometres of the State as per Forest Survey of India, The forests in Tamil Nadu are classified as tropical wet evergreen, tropical semi evergreen, tropical moist deciduous, littoral and swamp, tropical dry deciduous, tropical thorn, tropical dry evergreen, subtropical

10 broadleaved hill, montane wet temperate and plantations. The tropical dry deciduous forest occupies the major part of forest land in Tamil Nadu, which covers square kilometers, i.e., percent of the forested area which is followed by plantations, square kilometers (20.97%) and tropical thorn forests, square kilometers (12.91%). All the other types of forests mentioned earlier individually accounts to less than 10 percentage in the forest area of Tamil Nadu and littoral and swamp forest accounts the least, to square kilometers (0.40%) only. TABLE 5.3 CARBON SEQUESTRATION POTENTIAL OF EXISTING FORESTS OF TAMIL NADU Sl. No. Forest Types 1. Tropical wet evergreen 2. Tropical semi evergreen 3. Tropical moist deciduous 4. Littoral and swamp 5. Tropical dry deciduous 6. Tropical thorn Area (%) Area (in km 2 ) Annual biomass increment* (t/ha) Annual biomass growth (tc) Annual Carbon Sequestration (tc) Total CO 2 Intake (tco 2 ) Tropical

11 dry evergreen 8. Subtropical broadleaved hill 9. Montane wet temperate Plantations Total Source: State of Forest Report, FSI, * The annual biomass increment values taken from Lal and Singh (2000). From the table 5.3, existing forests of Tamil Nadu is sequestrating more than 5.47 million tonnes of CO 2 per year which is equal to 1.49 million tonnes of carbon sequestration, contributes to reduce atmospheric carbon significantly. The average carbon sequestration potential and CO 2 intake is 0.63 tonnes and 2.32 tonnes per hectare respectively for the existing forests of Tamil Nadu. The plantations record the highest contribution to carbon sequestration ( tonnes) and CO 2 intake (2.90 million tonnes) because the per hectare biomass increment of plantations is high and it accounts to one-fifth of the forested area in Tamil Nadu. The annual biomass growth is 2.98 million tonnes per year and average biomass growth per hectare is 1.26 tonnes per annum. Moreover, the monetary value of carbon sequestration of forests in Tamil Nadu state and in India also is estimated to identify the role of the forests of Kanyakumari district, in the process of Greening India. The forests of Tamil Nadu is sequestering CO 2 tagged the value of $164.2 million.

12 The potential for carbon sequestration is large, but there are large variations in the estimates of factors such as land availability and the rate of carbon uptake complicate the calculations and the amount of carbon sequestered in a forest is constantly changing with growth, death and decomposition of vegetation (Gorte, 2009). Aggarwal et al (2006) estimated that 5.24 tonnes of carbon is sequestered by the forests under protection annually. Poffenberger et al (2002) estimated that in India the above ground mean annual growth of degraded forests was 3 tonnes of carbon per hectare and some of the earlier studies estimated 1tC/ha for unclassed forests. 5.3 CARBON SEQUESTRATION POTENTIAL OF EXISTING FORESTS OF INDIA India has square kilometres of forest area which covers percentage of the geographical area of square kilometres which included the mangrove forests of 4662 square kilometres (SFR, 2011). The forests of India are classified as tropical wet evergreen, tropical semi evergreen, tropical moist deciduous, littoral and swamp, tropical dry deciduous, tropical thorn, tropical dry evergreen, subtropical broadleaved hill, subtropical pine, subtropical dry evergreen, montane wet temperate, Himalayan moist temperate, Himalayan dry temperate and alpine and sub alpine forests. The tropical dry deciduous forest occupies the major part of forest land in India, which covers square

13 kilometers, i.e., percent of the forested area which is followed by tropical moist deciduous forests, square kilometers (19.73%) and tropical semi evergreen forests, square kilometers (13.79%). All the other types of forests mentioned earlier accounts to the remaining percent of the forest area of India. TABLE 5.4 CARBON SEQUESTRATION POTENTIAL OF EXISTING FORESTS OF INDIA Sl. No. Forest Types Area (%) Area (in km 2 ) Annual biomass increment* (t/ha) Annual biomass growth (tc) Annual Carbon Sequestration (tc) Total CO 2 Intake (tco 2 ) 1. Tropical wet evergreen Tropical semi evergreen Tropical moist deciduous Littoral and swamp Tropical dry deciduous Tropical thorn Tropical dry evergreen Subtropical broadleaved hill Subtropical pine 10. Subtropical dry evergreen 11. Montane wet temperate 12. Himalayan moist temperate Himalayan dry temperate Alpine and sub-alpine Plantations Total Source: State of Forest Report, FSI, 2011

14 * The annual biomass increment values taken from Lal and Singh (2000). From the table 5.4, existing forests of India is sequestrating more than 127 million tonnes of CO 2 per year which is equal to million tonnes of carbon sequestration, which contributes to reduce atmospheric carbon of the globe. The tropical dry deciduous forests record the highest contribution to carbon sequestration (9.5 million tonnes) and CO 2 intake (35 million tonnes) because it occupies nearly half of the forested area in India. The annual biomass growth in Indian forests is 69 million tonnes per year. The monetary value of CO 2 sequestered by the forests in India is $ million. 5.4 COST OF CO 2 CAPTURE There are biotic and abiotic ways for carbon sequestration. The biotic sequestration is the natural carbon sequestration in biological systems. The abiotic sequestration includes the available technological solution to reduce atmospheric CO 2 concentration. The cost varies in abiotic sequestration with the technology used in industrial sectors.

15 TABLE 5.5 COST OF CO 2 CAPTURE IN INDUSTRIAL SECTOR Sl. No. Industrial Sector Cost in US$ (t/co 2 ) 1. High Purity Sector (Ammonia, Hydrogen, ethylene and natural gas) Cement Pulp and Paper Biomass conversion (ethanol and hydrogen ) Refineries Iron and Steel Source: UNIDO, From table 5.6 it is understood that all other methods of carbon sequestration could cost more than $30 per tonne of carbon. The carbon sequestered by natural ecosystems like forests was identified as the least cost method for carbon sequestration in large quantities and the problem of transportation and storage is absent in this natural carbon sequestration which highlights the practical use of carbon sequestration by forest ecosystems.

16 5.5 TRADING POTENTIAL OF THE CARBON SEQUESTERED BY THE RESERVED FORESTS OF KANYAKUMARI DISTRICT The reserved forests of Kanyakumari district having rich potential for carbon sequestration which has carbon stock of tonnes. The sequestered carbon by the reserved forests has larger life span because the reserved forests are legally protected ones and permanence of sequestered carbon could be achieved. The earlier studies on forest carbon sequestration and carbon trading assigned monetary value of $30 per tonne of sequestered carbon (Atkinson and Haripriya, 2006; Rootzen et al, 2010). The monetary value of the carbon sequestered by the reserved forests of Kanyakumari district is equal to $ while assigning $30 per tonne of CO 2 sequestered. 5.6 SUMMARY

17 The carbon sequestration of reserved forests of Kanyakumari district is tonnes of CO 2 which is tagged at the monetary value of $ The unit cost of sequestered carbon is $30 which is lower than other abiotic sequestration technologies. The problem of leakage arises with carbon sequestration when the forests are protected in one place or region because of the local demand for timber, wood and forest products. However, the leakage problem could be minimum in the study area which has timber trees in the backyards and landholdings of households traditionally because the people in Kanyakumari district has interest in growing trees in their landholdings to meet their own demand for timber and for commercial purposes. References: 1. Aggarwal A, Sharma R S, Suthar B and Kunwar K, An ecological assessment of greening of Aravali mountain range through joint forest

18 management in Rajasthan, India, International Journal of Environment and Sustainable Development, Vol. 5, No. 1, 2006, pp Atkinson G and Haripriya G S, Accounting for India s Forest Wealth, Ecological Economics, Vol. 59, No. 4, 2006, pp DeLucia E H, Moore D J and Norby R J, Contrasting responses of forest ecosystems to rising atmospheric CO 2 : Implications for the global C cycle, Global Biogeochemical Cycles, Vol. 19, No.3, DOI: /2004GB Gorte R W, Carbon Sequestration in Forests, Congressional Research Service Report, 2009, RL 31432, pp Haripriya G S, Carbon Budget of the Indian Forest Ecosystem, Climate Change, Vol. 56, No. 3, 2003, pp Joseph S, Reddy C S, Thomas A P, Srivastava S K and Srivastava V K, Spatial interpolation of carbon stock: a case study from the Western Ghats biodiversity hotspot, India, International Journal of Sustainable Development and World Ecology, Vol.17, No.6, 2010, Lal M and Singh R, Carbon Sequestration Potential of Indian Forests, Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, Vol. 60, No.3, 2000, pp

19 8. Poffenberger M, Silva E D, Ravindranath N H, Pingle U, Murthy I K and Tuttle, The Clean Development Mechanism and Village-based Forest Restoration. A case study from Adilabad District, Andhra Pradesh, India, United States of America, Community Forestry International, Ramachandran A, Jayakumar S, Harro R M, Bhaskaran A and Arockiasamy D I, Carbon sequestration: estimation of carbon stock in natural forests using geospatial technology in the Eastern Ghats of Tamil Nadu, India, Current Science, Vol.92, No.3, 2007, pp Report on Kanyakumari Wildlife Sacturay, 2009, pp Rootzen J M, Berndes G, Ravindranath N H, Somashekar H I, Murthy I K, Sudha P and Ostwald M, Carbon sequestration versus bioenergy: A case study from South India exploring the relative land-use efficiency of two options for climate change mitigation, Biomass and Bioenergy, Vol. 34, No.1, 2010, pp Sathaye J A, Andrasko K, Makundi W, La Rovere E L, Ravindranath N H, Melli A, Rangachari A, Imaz M, Gay C, R Friedmann R, Goldberg B, Van Horen C, Simmonds G and Parker G, Concerns about climate change mitigation projects: summary of findings from case studies in Brazil, India, Mexico and South Africa, Environmental Science and Policy, Vol. 2, No.2, 1999, pp