A highly effective strategy to reduce carbon emissions may be to pay people to not cut down forests
Economics can have a significant role in ecological preservation. For example, countries that sell the right to take a certain number of fish to fisherman have found that the fishermen have a strong financial incentive to preserve the stock. Combined with the demonstrated benefits to oceanic biota of establishing no-fish zones to allow for successful reproduction, such strategies have demonstrated that it is possible to not only preserve, but allow for the successful recovery, of plant and animal life in the oceans. Similar lessons have been learned in terms of preserving land animals and ecosystems.
The latest application of this approach? Well consider the fundamentals. Not cutting down trees in forested areas prevents emissions that would otherwise have occurred, which gives untouched forest huge financial value, and if compensated would provide people who live in the forest with an incentive to preserve it.
What is the value of such a strategy in terms of minimizing the impacts of GHG emissions? Preventing deforestation is potentially one of the simplest ways to reduce global emissions. At the moment, carbon emissions from deforestation account for some 18% of global greenhouse-gas emissions, more than all the world’s trains, cars, trucks, aircraft, and ships combined. Further, reducing deforestation and land-degradation will be vital if temperature increases are to be kept to within “safe levels” (generally assumed to mean no more than about a 2ºC [~3.6ºF] increase). It has been argued that such a strategy would be a quicker and cheaper way of reducing emissions than many alternatives, such as weaning the world’s vehicle fleet off fossil fuels, forcing people to cut back on energy use, or switching to low-carbon forms of power generation, such as wind farms and nuclear power. All those alternatives will be necessary too, but they will take a long time, will require new technologies and infrastructure, and cause controversies of their own.
This idea is known as “avoided deforestation” or “reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation” (REDD). At the moment REDD is not so much a plan as a collection of proposals and some working schemes, like that being tried in Novo Aripuanã, Brazil. The fate of the forests in Brazil, Indonesia, the Philippines, and elsewhere around the world could hang on the success of this approach. But there will need to be substantial international commitments to reduce global emissions to create demand for the carbon offsets that REDD schemes can provide. This means that a lot hangs on a GHG deal being struck in December in Copenhagen, where countries will meet to negotiate a new climate treaty.
When one contemplates an effective, but low-cost strategy for reducing GHG emissions, two policies leap to mind: REDD and improved energy efficiency (aka conservation), which has been discussed in detail in several prior posts. As noted in prior posts also, any carbon credits scheme is subject to being gamed, and one would be a fool not to expect fraud to be rampant. As such, regulation, oversight, and effective management will be a necessity. But, the bottom line is that REDD could be an awful lot cheaper than many of the alternatives advocated today, such as those that involve construction of nuclear powerplants. [Comments on the danger inherent in nuclear powerplants will be undertaken in the near future.]