Box 5: Tripa and Batang Toru Case Studies

The World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), in collaboration with PanEco and Yayasan Ekosistem Lestari (YEL), conducted a rapid assessment of ecosystem services and human liveli- hood options in two key areas where Sumatran orangutans occur (Tata and van Noordwijk 2010): Tripa (forests on peat- land) and Batang Toru (forest on non-peatland). The main ob- jective was to determine what carbon prices would be neces- sary to offset the opportunity costs of land-use transitions. Here the focus is on the land use transition from primary (un- disturbed) forest to other land uses. For a range of land uses that occur in the two focus areas the profitability and carbon stocks were determined (Figure 1). Undisturbed forest clearly has the highest carbon stock while rice fields have the lowest.

In this study carbon stocks in land uses other than forest were included in the economic valuation analysis.

Using satellite images, land use changes from 1990 until

2009 were determined at both sites to calculate overall CO2 emissions. Deforestation in both areas led to different land use transitions, with the predominant land use in Batang Toru after deforestation being disturbed forest and in Tripa, oil palm plantations (Figure 2).

Although overall annual deforestation rates in Batang Toru were very low (0.11% per year, range 0.002-0.835) they were extremely high in Tripa (5.03% per year, range 2.77-14.15).

Figure 1: Carbon stocks for different types of land uses, on mineral and peat soil where measured and/or applicable.

Figure 2: Conversion of forest to different land uses for Batang Toru (2001-2009) and Tripa (2001-2009). 64