Nicaragua: Precious Woods
1 Project Documents
This small-scale project consists of reforestation of degraded pasture land of two former cattle ranches in Southwestern Nicaragua with teak and valuable native wood species. The project will plant 1500 ha, with 95% teak and valuable native wood species for the remaining 5%. Emissions reductions from 700 ha will be sold to the BioCF while the remainder will be reserved for the emerging voluntary market for forestry credits. This project will serve as a pilot for conserving the existing secondary forest consisting of ornamental and fruit-bearing native species in the project area. Most of the native species being considered are threatened and some of them are protected under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). The reforestation technology includes production of seedlings in greenhouses and nurseries from seeds and vegetative reproduction. Where topography and site conditions allow, soil preparation will be done mechanically with a disk plough. The planting will be done manually. Existing natural forest remnants as well as advanced secondary forests and major single trees will be left standing. Thinning will be carried out in function of the size of the trees at different ages. The harvesting cycle is between 26 and 40 years according to site quality and species.
|
Nursery (Photo: Precious Woods) |
The project is expected to sequester around 0.175 Mt CO2e by 2017. Teak was chosen as the main species because there is not enough evidence yet on growth, quality and market perspectives regarding native wood species. Teak has been planted in Central America for several decades and has proven to be not invasive, well adapted to the prevailing ecological conditions and to have no significant negative ecological impacts on other ecosystems. If the pilot were to be applied on a larger scale, by leaving existing forest remnants standing and planting according to a mosaic mixing species, it should potentially bring along not only carbon sequestration, but also benefits regarding landscape, wildlife and ecological diversity. Additional environmental benefits of such a reforestation would include the restoration of ecological forest functions such as prevention of erosion, groundwater protection, soil regeneration, improvement of the microclimate and water balance. The project will provide some employment for seasonal tasks such as planting, weeding, pruning and thinning, and harvesting. Leakage Leakage from the implementation of the project activities is very unlikely since the land is privately owned and the previous ranching activity used only little labor. In any case, since it is a small-scale project, this does not have to be dealt with in the methodology and eliminates this risk. The potential risk of non-permanence is mitigated by the long term commercial nature of the project, and by the critical importance of the additional revenue from the carbon sequestration.
This project has already been extremely useful in identifying limits to commercial sustainability under current LULUCF rules and what is and isn’t possible.
The project is developed by Precious Woods Holding AG, a Swiss private agro-forestry company that has operations sites in Brazil, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua. Precious Woods Holding AG and its subsidiaries already have the FSC certification for several of their existing agro-forestry activities.
THEMATIC INFORMATION
For more information on this project's thematic information (i.e., Biodiversity, Other Environmental Benefits and Risks, Socio-economic benefits and risks, Leakage, Risk of Non Permanence, and Additionality), please click here.
|
