Mitigating Climate Change by Planting Trees: The Transaction Costs Trap

Gerrit van Kooten, Sabina Lee Shaikh and Pavel Suchánek

Land Economics, 2002, vol. 78, issue 4, 559-572

Abstract: Land-use change and forestry projects are considered a low-cost option for addressing climate change mitigation. In Canada, afforestation is targeted to sequester enough carbon to meet one-fifth of its international obligations, and at lower cost than emissions reduction. We examine economic aspects of the institutions and incentives needed to encourage landowners in Canada to adopt tree planting on a large scale. Based on data from a survey of landowners, the transaction costs of getting landowners to convert their land from agriculture to plantation forests appear to be a significant obstacle, possibly increasing the costs of afforestation projects beyond what conventional economic analysis suggests.

JEL-codes: Q25 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2002
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (32)

Downloads: (external link)
http://le.uwpress.org/cgi/reprint/78/4/559
A subscription is required to access pdf files. Pay per article is available.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:uwp:landec:v:78:y:2002:i:4:p:559-572

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Land Economics from University of Wisconsin Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().