Harnessing REDD+ opportunities for forest conservation and carbon stock enhancement in the Northeastern States of India

Abstract

Forests have significant economic and ecologi- cal value as a provider of ecosystem services, being home to much of the world’s biodiversity and supporting the livelihoods of many people. Reducing emissions from deforestation and for- est degradation in developing countries (REDD) is a critical component of the overall green- house gas emission reductions and now the significance of REDD+ (which is not only about reducing emissions but halting and reversing forest loss), in delivering climate change mitiga- tion benefits along with co-benefits, is increas- ingly being recognized in global climate nego- tiations. Northeast India provides a tremendous potential for harnessing REDD+ activities with about 66% of the total geographical area of the region being covered by forests. This paper at- tempts to explore this potential besides esti- mating the area available for different options under REDD+ as well as the mitigation potential using COMAP model, overcoming limitations of existing studies or a lack of them. Within this, the status of forests and biodiversity along with drivers of deforestation in north east India are documented and an assessment of the potential for taking up reducing deforestation and degra- dation and enhancement of carbon stocks and afforestation is conducted both at the state as well as district level. It was found that north- eastern states have been experiencing net forest loss during the last few years along with sig- nificant scale forest degradation, with Nagaland followed by Arunachal Pradesh offering maxi- mum potential for “reducing deforestation” op- tion under REDD and the total incremental an- nual mitigation potential of the four REDD+ ac- tivities in northeast India being 29.2 MtCO2 for 2030