Projects

By promoting climate-smart landscapes, the Working Landscapes programme will contribute to climate change mitigation, adaptation, improved livelihoods, and environmental integrity, which are crucial to achieving the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Situated in the northeastern part of South America, the Guiana Shield is formed by French Guiana, Suriname, Guyana and parts of Brazil, Venezuela and Colombia. The region is considered the most untouched and pristine area of rain forest in the world, with a huge potential for conservation and sustainable development.

Hinterland villages are a typical component of a productive landscape: a forested area where several activities occur at the same time. Apart from the living area of villages, there are activities such as, agriculture, collection of forest products, hunting and fishing, logging, tourism, mining, and infrastructural works.

Suriname has been engaged in REDD since 2008, which later developed into REDD+. In 2013 the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) approved the Readiness Preparation Proposal (R-PP). The REDD+ readiness preparation phase in Suriname fosters openness, participation and transparency, improved data collection and analysis, and national and multi-sectoral dialogue and cooperation.

Suriname has a total land surface of 163,820 km2, of which 94% is covered with forests. Forest Management principles are based on the Celos Management System which has been developed in Suriname in the sixties until the eighties. Based on the Celos Harvesting System, the annual allowable cut is 25 m3 per ha and the cycle is 25 years.

The upper Suriname River area is home to about 60 Maroon villages which combined have about 15,000 people that depend on the surrounding forests for their livelihood. Additionally this forest provides other ecosystem services of great importance for Suriname, such as the potential to store carbon (that supports the national REDD+ strategy).

Sustainable use of community forests will contribute to the development of the hinterland communities in Suriname and long-term maintenance of the ecosystem services provided by these forests.

This project aims to utilize a sustainable forest management system that focuses on the tendering of potential crop trees, in preference to the CELOS management system (CMS). As a spin-off of the project, some of the CELOS (Centre for Agricultural Research in Suriname) experimental plots will be re-measured to show the long-term effects of CMS.

Until now the Suriname forest sector (both commercial loggers and community based forestry) lacks an appropriate set of rules and regulations for sustainable forest use and management.

Suriname has expressed its preparedness to follow the recommendations of the UNFCCC decision calling on countries to prepare for, and implement activities, related to enhancement of forest carbon stocks and avoidance or reduction of emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD), which account for approximately 15% of annual global emissions.

Based on its National Forest Policy (2005) the Government of Suriname (GoS) aims to improve the contribution of forests to the socio-economic development of the country. As part of this, the Foundation for Forest Management and Production Control (SBB) wishes to gain insight in and knowledge on the economics of Minor Timber Products (MTP), which until present, have their role in part neglected as a potential forest financing mechanism (FFM).

Tropenbos Suriname together with the Centre for Agricultural Research in Suriname (CELOS) and Environmental Services and Support (ESS), and co-sponsoring from WWF-Guianas have published a quarterly specialist journal on Forest and Nature “Vakblad Bos & Natuur” meant for the various stakeholders in the forest and nature field.