EXPERT GROUP ON BIODIVERSITY AND CLIMATE CHANGE First Meeting

1. Production forests targeted to permanently produce commercial timber exceed 50 % of the land area in Borneo. Whether sustainable forestry is practiced in Bornean production forests will considerably influence the world LUCF carbon emission as well as the fate of biodiversity, especially endangered wildlife of world concern. 2. Current practices of logging in the majority of production forests are of high impacts, leaving behind highly degraded residual forests where carbon stock and biodiversity are much impoverished. These degraded residual forests are still qualified a bona fide “forest ” by its definition. A baseline scenario in much of the production forests is thus a high-impact logging practice and by its definition the practice will not directly cause deforestation. 3. Sustainable forestry which employs reduced-impact logging with strict compliance to international principles can maintain carbon stock at a much higher level than the baseline (i.e. unsustainable forestry) does. Sustainable forestry can also restore the integrity of communities for various taxonomic groups, and thus has favorable co-benefits for biodiversity conservation