"Development of a Common Protocol to Assess the Impact of Forest Management Practices on Climate Change"
Duration 15/09/2017 – 14/09/2018
EuropeAid Project Reference no: CCGS/124 
CFCU/TR2013/0327.05.01-02/124 – EuropeAid/138406/ID/ACT/TR
The Action is part of the Capacity Building in the Field of Climate Change in Turkey Grant Scheme (CCGS). Climate change, being one of the most serious environmental problems that directly affect the economy and human life, requires urgent political, economic and sociocultural action on global, national and local level to overcome or at least to minimize its negative impacts. Being well aware of the problem, most of the countries signed the United Nations Framework Climate Change Convention (UNFCCC) in 1992 to combat climate change. Since then many other countries have become a party to the UNFCCC and its implementation tool Kyoto Protocol.
Located in the Eastern Mediterranean Basin, where countries are at greater risk of the negative effects of climate change, Turkey joined the UNFCCC in 2004 and ratified the Kyoto Protocol in 2009. Turkey’s national vision includes becoming a country fully integrating climate change-related objectives into its development policies and actively participating in the efforts for tackling climate change. Towards that end, and as a candidate country for the EU, Turkey develops and implements required policies at national and local level to combat climate change in coordination with the UNFCCC Parties and especially European Union (EU).
In accordance with Turkey’s goals regarding the harmonization with EU policies and regulations, the Action aims to enhance the capacity of public and private stakeholders towards the mitigation of the impacts of climate change, focusing on management practices in planted forests. It also includes activities to raise public awareness on the urgency and importance of combatting climate change and disseminate the results of the Action to extend its application to other forested areas as well.
The overall project objectives are summarized as follows:
- Estimation of the carbon stock and carbon balance of planted forests in the Trabzon wider region
- Identification of the origins of carbon balance fluctuations in the Trabzon wider region
- Examination of sustainable forest management practices to optimise carbon balance and counter-steer climate change impacts
- Harmonisation of forest management policies and measures taken for Climate change mitigation in the EU regarding planted forests
- Development of a common framework to describe, assess and monitor carbon stock, emissions and removals of planted forests in line with the respective EU policies
- Monitoring forest parameters that can be used as indices of climate change impacts (species composition and surface area, biodiversity data if available, threats-epidemics)
