Global variation in the cost of increasing ecosystem carbon

Markku Larjavaara (), Markku Kanninen, Harold Gordillo, Joni Koskinen, Markus Kukkonen, Niina Käyhkö, Anne M. Larson and Sven Wunder
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Markku Larjavaara: University of Helsinki
Markku Kanninen: University of Helsinki
Harold Gordillo: NIRAS Finland Oy
Joni Koskinen: University of Turku
Markus Kukkonen: University of Turku
Niina Käyhkö: University of Turku
Anne M. Larson: Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR)

Nature Climate Change, 2018, vol. 8, issue 1, 38-42

Abstract: Abstract Slowing the reduction, or increasing the accumulation, of organic carbon stored in biomass and soils has been suggested as a potentially rapid and cost-effective method to reduce the rate of atmospheric carbon increase 1 . The costs of mitigating climate change by increasing ecosystem carbon relative to the baseline or business-as-usual scenario has been quantified in numerous studies, but results have been contradictory, as both methodological issues and substance differences cause variability 2 . Here we show, based on 77 standardized face-to-face interviews of local experts with the best possible knowledge of local land-use economics and sociopolitical context in ten landscapes around the globe, that the estimated cost of increasing ecosystem carbon varied vastly and was perceived to be 16–27 times cheaper in two Indonesian landscapes dominated by peatlands compared with the average of the eight other landscapes. Hence, if reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) and other land-use mitigation efforts are to be distributed evenly across forested countries, for example, for the sake of international equity, their overall effectiveness would be dramatically lower than for a cost-minimizing distribution.

Date: 2018
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DOI: 10.1038/s41558-017-0015-7

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