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A lesson to Lanka on how to earn carbon credits
The new species of tree found in a peat swamp in Sumatra, Indonesia has been named Disepalum rawagambut
The recent discovery in Indonesia of a new species of tree has drawn attention to how even countries like Sri Lanka can earn handsomely through carbon credits.
A three-member team of tropical botanists and ecologists from the National University of Singapore (NUS) led by Sri Lankan born conservationist Lahiru Wijedasa discovered the tree last year as a result of prolonged work alongside research assistant Agusti Randi, Indonesia’s leading botanist. Found in a peat swamp in Sumatra, it has been named Disepalum rawagambut.
The project is part of the Integrated Tropical Peatland Restoration Programme of the NUS’s Environmental Research Institute, said Dr Wijedasa, an ecologist and newly-appointed Asia Forest Coordinator for BirdLife International, a century-old international conservation body. Two more new species are under scientific review.
The site is owned by a large Indonesian plantation company with agricultural concession of around 2.5 million hectares on the island of Sumatra. (An agricultural concession is a contract between a government and an agribusiness company to grow crops, similar to a tea or rubber plantation in Sri Lanka.
“This particular site has intact rainforest with tigers preserved by the company in the plantation,” Dr Wijedasa said. “Additionally, half of the plantation was retired to become a restoration site to protect the forest,” Dr Wijedasa said.
Earlier, he had done PhD fieldwork on the project site and found that birds and mammals were bringing in so many seeds that the forest in the restoration site was growing back naturally. He later communicated his discovery to a senior officer of Temasek, Singapore’s largest investment group, over coffee.
“We spoke for hours and he didn’t believe some of the things I said about haze-causing forest fires,” he recalled. “So I sent him the raw data and told him to get his analysts to work on it. They came back saying I was correct and wanted to know how to help. Their main focus was to solve the forest fires that were causing haze.”
South-East Asia is blanketed by haze every year when Sumatran peatlands and other areas catch fire. Indonesian agricultural companies are also blamed.
Dr Wijedasa advised the financiers to fund the search for a solution. “We needed to do the science to understand how the forest works in order to even to start to find a solution,” he said. “That’s what they did. They backed my current project over three years and we are trying to understand how the ecosystem functions.”
Sri Lankan born conservationist Lahiru Wijedasa
There are other groups working on microbes, chemicals and using satellites and drones to monitor forest regrowth. Dr Wijedasa’s team focuses on plants. The first step was to identify and create a photographic database to allow anyone in Asia to identify the plant species. The second was to study plant characteristics: leaves, wood, their roots, how they grow and nutrients. Third, was to examine how they were in nature and how they could be used in restoration or agriculture.
The scientists came across the new tree in 2015. But without flowers, for six years they didn’t know it was a new species. “During fieldwork last year, however, we were lucky to witness a mass flowering where this new tree species had flowers,” Dr Wijedasa said. “We had never seen anything like it. The forest was full of colourful flowers and amazing smells. This situation occurred suddenly, perhaps owing to a change in the environment or temperature, it is a rare event that only happens every 5-10 years.”
The team also observed the flowers becoming fruits, and the fruits being eaten by hornbills and wild boars. The diversity in a peat swamp is way higher than mangroves.
“In South-East Asia alone, we have 25,000 species of trees,” he explained. “So to find a new one you need to know a bit about everything. But you don’t need to know all the plants in the world! Since this particular plant belongs to a specific plant family, we knew it is new to this ecosystem.”
This can easily be replicated in Sri Lanka where the fauna and flora are relatively known but not studied for an extensive period of time. “We need to research them in the context of climate change,” he stressed. “And the best way to tackle rising global temperatures is to have ecosystems that promote species survival. We must restore our ecosystems with native plants.”
To do it here won’t require reinventing the wheel. “We could identify a site with an intact forest that has areas of non-forest that could be reforested,” Dr Wijedasa explained. “First, study the existing vegetation, take inventory, photograph and identify. Then, study the traits of each plant like their leaves, wood, roots and how they grow. Third, collect their seeds or propagate them vegetatively and do some nursery experiments to understand under what conditions they grow.”
“The next step is to look at the restoration site and see why nothing is growing, most of the time it’s not seed availability, it is usually a site limitation,” he continued. “Then, overcome the natural forest regeneration barriers by intervening. Planting should only be done as the last option and only if the barrier is the seed source–such as if there is no forest nearby from which seeds could come or no disperser (e.g., bird/mammal) to bring the seed.”
There is knowledge, infrastructure and capacity in Sri Lanka to do this, Dr Wijedasa said. It can be done cheaply and “at a world-class level” in close relationship with agriculture and livelihoods.
“To that end, the role of the private sector is important, like in Indonesia,” he maintained. “They need to get tree-planting out of their minds and focus on ecosystem restoration (i.e. overcoming barriers to natural forest growth). An immediate possibility is to target buffer areas adjacent to rivers and streams in the hill-country, steep slopes and lands which can’t be used for anything. You see so many abandoned lands along the way to Nuwara Eliya, for instance.”
Any land including private lands could be eligible for carbon credits. “The jurisdictional boundaries don’t matter when it comes to restoration and carbon,” he elaborated. “Do it on lands that can’t be used for anything.”
Carbon credits can be earned when either carbon is increased due to some action or if carbon that would be emitted due to some action is saved, i.e. a reduction. For instance, restoring a forest increases carbon on a land while reducing or stopping deforestation saves carbon that would have been lost, both of which are eligible for carbon credits.
Interestingly, companies retiring plantations were originally some of the largest deforesters. Some have moved into reforesting and conservation, a sea change in attitudes and actions. Is there a similar interest in Sri Lanka?
“There isn’t, but there could easily be,” Dr Wijedasa asserted. “It’s low-hanging fruit. Carbon credits programmes could bring in a lot of funds. If usable lands are identified and there is a commitment on paper to go ahead, seed funds could come in. You can earn a serious amount as one ton of carbon is about US$ 7 to 22 now, and currently many companies and countries need more carbon than is available. It is really a producers’ market.”
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