Supporting silvo-pastoral NAMAs through satellite monitoring of livestock-forest interactions: deforestation, degradation, and regeneration

Dietary changes and growing populations are leading to major increases in demand for livestock products in subSaharan Africa. As agriculture is the major source of GHG emissions in East Africa and livestock its major contributor, we can expect an increase of total GHG emissions associated to that future demand. Low Emissions Development Strategies (LEDs) for the dairy sector are therefore a top priority for East Africa governments and donors. Mitigation action currently aims at increasing productivity to reduce GHG emissions intensities in livestock systems (more productive animals and better diets). While livestock LEDs are a fundamental effort, no gross mitigation potential in the livestock sector is foreseen, as reduced emission intensities will be compensated by increasing herds. The mitigation potential of the livestock sector mainly lays, therefore, outside the sector itself and on the surrounding forests since livestock is a major driver of land use change, forest and soil degradation. Land restoration initiatives that lead to forest recovery and expansion, as well as avoided deforestation and soil restoration are therefore fundamental complementary initiatives to compensate unavoidable future livestock emissions. So far, we are missing monitoring approaches to reliably detect trends of deforestation, forest degradation and forest regeneration associated to the forest-livestock interface. We will here present the use of a new algorithm (STEF) to track livestock-forest dynamics in the highlands of Tanzania. We will also debate its utility to support cross-sectoral NAMA development by helping establish baselines of the livetock-forest interface and reliable monitoring systems.