Avoiding Deforestation to Limit Climate Change 'Cheap and Practical'

The research attaches estimated dollar amounts to each metric ton of carbon that could be saved through avoided deforestation in Africa, Central and South America, and Southeast Asia.

Governments willing to spend a total of about $1 billion annually could prevent the emission of roughly half a billion metric tons of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide a year for the next 25 years.

It would take about that much money to stop about a tenth of the tropical deforestation around the world, the researchers say. Tropical deforestation, the cutting and burning of trees to convert land to grow crops and raise livestock, accounts for about a fifth of all human-caused carbon emissions in the world.

If adopted, this type of program could have potential to reduce global carbon emissions by between two and 10 percent, the study estimates.

The calculation is one of several estimates described by a team of scientists and economists today in the online edition of "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences."

Based on these estimates, the overall cost to buy carbon credits would be lower than what developed nations would expect to pay to reduce emissions through regulation of industry, transportation and energy sources, said Brent Sohngen, a study co-author and professor of agricultural, environmental and development economics at Ohio State University.

The calculations, based on three different forestry and land-use models, provide the best estimates to date of how much it would cost developed nations to participate in a program called "avoided deforestation" to reduce worldwide carbon emissions.

"Compared to other options, an avoided deforestation program would be relatively cheap and practical for the United States," said Sohngen, who developed one of three computer models used to calculate the estimates.

Burning forests for agriculture in Laos. (Photo by Fritz Stugren)

"It would save American taxpayers money and provide a huge transfer of funding from one region of the world to another, giving developing countries a larger chunk of the world's economic pie to use as they see fit," he said.

The three models used to calculate the estimates are called the Global Timber Model, developed by Sohngen; the Dynamic Integrated Model of Forestry and Alternative Land Use, developed at the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg, Austria; and the Generalized Comprehensive Mitigation Assessment Process Model, developed at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California.

The models employ different economic and biological assumptions to reach their deforestation and carbon-emission projections. Each model takes into account changes expected to occur over time, especially incentives for deforestation relating to demand for agricultural land based on changes in population, income and technology.

"The results indicate that substantial emission reductions could be accomplished through 2030, the period we examined," Sohngen said.

"If this kind of program could stop deforestation, it would provide a bigger source of biodiversity by retaining a larger stock of tropical forest, keep carbon out of the atmosphere, and provide money to people in developing countries to pursue new forms of livelihood that don't involve cutting down trees," he said.

Avoided deforestation is not a new idea, but to date it has not been widely accepted.

"There is a global benefit for maintaining forests, but nobody is paying for it," said World Bank technical specialist Werner Kornexl back in 2006. "Developing countries would like to be compensated for the economic benefits they forgo by preserving their forests."

At the 2007 G8 Summit, the World Bank won G8 support to start a $250 million investment fund to reward countries such as Indonesia, Brazil and Congo for avoided deforestation.

Now, the avoided deforestation cost estimates produced by Sohngen and his team could be used in ongoing negotiations toward a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. UN officials are aiming to complete the successor agreement by December 2009 to allow time for it to be ratified before the Kyoto Protocol expires.

The United States has signed but has not ratified the Kyoto Protocol, which has been ratified by 182 parties, including 137 developing countries and 36 developed countries, plus the European Union.

Slash and burn clearing on the edge of Madagascar's Mikea Forest. (Photo courtesy WorldView International)

The Kyoto Protocol included avoided deforestation as a potential method of reducing global carbon emissions, but "it just didn't pick up any steam at that time," Sohngen said.

Several countries, including Papua New Guineau, Bolivia, Central African Republic, Chile, Congo, and Costa Rica, have banded together as the Coalition for Rainforest Nations to lobby for an agreement that compensates them for avoiding deforestation. The coalition operates as an intergovernmental organization with the Secretariat currently housed at Columbia University in New York City.

The Coalition for Rainforest Nations is holding a policy workshop on reducing emissions from deforestation in developing countries July 28 and 29 in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. Delegates will discuss and draft a joint statement for consideration at the next round of United Nations climate change talks coming up in August in Accra, Ghana.

Sohngen said, "There were lots of constraints within the Kyoto treaty about using land-use options to abate carbon emissions. It looks like there is a large effort now to try to relax some of those constraints in order to allow avoided deforestation to be considered as a carbon abatement mechanism."

"If this kind of program could stop deforestation," he said, "it would provide a bigger source of biodiversity by retaining a larger stock of tropical forest, keep carbon out of the atmosphere, and provide money to people in developing countries to pursue new forms of livelihood that don't involve cutting down trees."

"Now, there is a huge debate about it, and our paper is just trying to add one economic component to the discussion," Sohngen said.

"If we're talking about the source of at least 20 percent of the world's emissions that can be cheaply abated, then why wouldn't we do it?" he asked. "If we don't spend the money to offer these countries development assistance, they're going to continue deforesting, so their emissions are just going to continue."

Sohngen conducted the analysis with Georg Kindermann, Michael Obersteiner and Ewald Rametsteiner of the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis; Jayant Sathaye of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Kenneth Andrasko of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; Bernhard Schlamadinger of Joanneum Research in Graz, Austria; Sven Wunder of the Center for International Forestry Research in Belém-PA, Brazil; and Robert Beach of RTI International in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.

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