BACK GROUND and MISSIONS

Deforestation in the tropics is occurring at an alarming rate and accelerates the loss of biodiversity. Tropical deforestation is therefore a serious global concern when achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Tropical forests provide essential natural resources such as timber, while they conserve biodiversity. Therefore, the synergy of the provisioning of natural resources and the conservation of biodiversity must be sought for human well-being. Whether we can achieve such a synergy depends if/ how we can financially support responsible foresters who safeguard forest environments while producing timber, as the payment for ecosystem services. We provide a scientific solution to evaluate biodiversity as well as carbon stock of a large area of tropical production forests to verify environmental safeguards and eventually to aid the payment for ecosystem services. The methodology is "Biodiversity Observation for Land and Ecosystem Health (BOLEH)". Our missions are to disseminate the concept and the methodology to achieve the conservation of tropical forests.

TWO BENEFITS of
TRANSPARENT EVALUATION OF ECOSYSTEM SERVICES

BENEFITS FOR FORESTERS

Quantify biodiversity and carbon for verifying environmental safeguards in forest certification, ecosystem-services claims, REDD+, carbon offset and etc. Reduce the cost of forest monitoring.

BENEFITS FOR OTHER STAKE HOLDERS

Derive transparent evidence of sustainable forest management to purchase safe forest products. Derive transparent evidence to invest for the enhancement of ecosystem services in tropical production forests.

Project members

PI, Kanehiro Kitayama, Professor of Forest Ecology, Kyoto University, Japan
Yoshimi Sawada, Forest Ecology Lab., Kyoto University, Japan
Ryota Aoyagi, Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute, Japan

Contact
Kanehiro Kitayama, Forest Ecology Lab., Kyoto University