Tropical Forest Protection, Uncertainty, and the Environmental Integrity of Carbon Mitigation Policies

Suzi Kerr, Joanna Hendy (), Shuguang Liu () and Alexander Pfaff
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Joanna Hendy: Motu Economic and Public Policy Research
Shuguang Liu: EROS Data Center

No 04_03, Working Papers from Motu Economic and Public Policy Research

Abstract: Tropical forests are estimated to release approximately 1.7 PgC per year as a result of deforestation. Avoiding tropical deforestation could potentially play a significant role in carbon mitigation over the next 50 years if not longer. Many policymakers and negotiators are skeptical of our ability to reduce deforestation effectively. They fear that if credits for avoided deforestation are allowed to replace fossil fuel emission reductions for compliance with Kyoto, the environment will suffer because the credits will not reflect truly additional carbon storage. This paper considers the nature of the uncertainties involved in estimating carbon stocks and predicting deforestation. We build an empirically based stochastic model that combines data from field ecology, geographical information system (GIS) data from satellite imagery, economic analysis and ecological process modeling to simulate the effects of these uncertainties on the environmental integrity of credits for avoided deforestation. We find that land use change, and hence additionality of carbon, is extremely hard to predict accurately and errors in the numbers of credits given for avoiding deforestation are likely to be very large. We also find that errors in estimation of carbon storage could be large and could have significant impacts. We find that in Costa Rica, nearly 42% of all the loss of environmental integrity that would arise from poor carbon estimates arises in one life zone, tropical wet. This suggests that research effort might be focused in this life zone.

Keywords: climate; economics; carbon sequestration; uncertainty; policy; tropics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q23 Q25 Q38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 54 pages
Date: 2004-03
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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