Avoided Deforestation: Prospects for Mitigating Climate Change

273 Pages·2009·2.3 MB·English

by  Charles Palmer, Stefanie Engel

Avoided Deforestation
Deforestation and forest degradation accounts for up to a fifth of global greenhouse
gas emissions, including carbon dioxide. It thus contributes substantially to global
climate change, which is a threat to people, economies and the environment.
Avoided deforestation can be characterized as the use of financial incentives to
reduce rates of deforestation, with much of the focus on forests in tropical coun-
tries. The idea of ‘reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation’ (REDD)
expands the concept of avoided deforestation to include reductions in forest degra-
dation as well.
While avoided deforestation, as a policy issue, is not new, the current debate in
academic and policy circles on including it as a future climate change mitigation
strategy is gathering pace. This debate is only likely to intensify as negotiations
continue over what should be included in the successor agreement to the Kyoto
Protocol, which is set to expire in 2012. This book brings together, for the first time,
a collection of new research findings in the area of avoided deforestation, along
with their policy implications, as well as the latest developments in environmental
and natural resource economics related to REDD.
Part I presents the cost effectiveness of avoided deforestation as a strategy to
mitigate climate change. Part II looks at the policy and institutional barriers to
including avoided deforestation as a climate strategy, while Part III looks at
insights into how policy to reduce emissions by avoiding deforestation can be
effectively and efficiently designed.
This edited collection is primarily aimed at postgraduate students, policymakers
and researchers who are interested in tropical forest conservation and climate
change. Environmental campaigners and lobbyists for NGOs will also find this
book useful.
Charles Palmeris currently a Senior Researcher at the Institute for Environmental
Decisions at the ETH Zurich in Switzerland, specializing in environmental and
development economics.
Stefanie Engel is Professor of Environmental Policy and Economics at the
Institute for Environmental Decisions at the ETH Zurich in Switzerland.
Routledge explorations in environmental economics
Edited by Nick Hanley
University of Stirling, UK
1. Greenhouse Economics
Value and ethics
Clive L. Spash
2. Oil Wealth and the Fate of Tropical Rainforests
Sven Wunder
3. The Economics of Climate Change
Edited by Anthony D. Owen and Nick Hanley
4. Alternatives for Environmental Valuation
Edited by Michael Getzner, Clive Spash and Sigrid Stagl
5. Environmental Sustainability
A consumption approach
Raghbendra Jha and K.V. Bhanu Murthy
6. Cost-Effective Control of Urban Smog
The significance of the Chicago cap-and-trade approach
Richard F. Kosobud, Houston H. Stokes, Carol D. Tallarico and
Brian L. Scott
7. Ecological Economics and Industrial Ecology
Jakub Kronenberg
8. Environmental Economics, Experimental Methods
Edited by Todd L. Cherry, Stephan Kroll and Jason F. Shogren
9. Game Theory and Policy Making in Natural Resources and the
Environment
Edited by Ariel Dinar, José Albiac and Joaquín Sánchez-Soriano
10. Arctic Oil and Gas
Sustainability at risk?
Edited by Aslaug Mikkelsen and Oluf Langhelle
11. Agrobiodiversity, Conservation and Economic Development
Edited by Andreas Kontoleon, Unai Pascual and Melinda Smale
12. Renewable Energy from Forest Resources in the United States
Edited by Barry D. Solomon and Valeria A. Luzadis
13. Modeling Environment-Improving Technological Innovations under
Uncertainty
Alexander A. Golub and Anil Markandya
14. Economic Analysis of Land Use in Global Climate Change Policy
Thomas Hertel, Steven Rose and Richard Tol
15. Waste and Environmental Policy
Massimiliano Mazzanti and Anna Montini
16. Avoided Deforestation
Prospects for mitigating climate change
Edited by Charles Palmer and Stefanie Engel

Avoided Deforestation
Prospects for mitigating climate
change
Edited by
Charles Palmer and Stefanie Engel
First published 2009
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group,
an informa business
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2009.
To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.
© 2009: Selection and editorial matter, Charles Palmer and Stefanie Engel;
individual chapters, the contributors
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A cataloguerecord for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN 0-203-88099-4 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 10: 0–415–44712–7 (hbk)
ISBN 10: 0–203–88099–9 (ebk)
ISBN 13: 978–0–415–44712–6 (hbk)
ISBN 13: 978–0–203–88099–9 (ebk)
Contents
List of contributors ix
Acknowledgements xi
List of abbreviations xii
1 Introduction: reducing CO emissions through avoided
2
deforestation? 1
CHARLES PALMER AND STEFANIE ENGEL
PART I
Cost effectiveness of avoided deforestation 9
2 Costs of avoided deforestation as a climate change
mitigation option 11
MARYANNE GREIG-GRAN
3 Economics of avoiding deforestation 39
EWALD RAMETSTEINER, MICHAEL OBERSTEINER, GEORG KINDERMANN
AND BRENT SOHNGEN
4 Assessing the economic potential for reducing deforestation
in developing countries 49
BRENT SOHNGEN
PART II
Policy and institutional barriers to avoided deforestation 69
5 International policy and institutional barriers to reducing
emissions from deforestation and degradation in
developing countries 71
TRACY JOHNS AND BERNHARD SCHLAMADINGER
viii Contents
6 Reducing carbon emissions by slowing deforestation:
REDD initiatives in Brazil 90
PAULO MOUTINHO, MARIANO C. CENAMO AND PAULA F. MOREIRA
7 Choosing avoided deforestation baselines in the context of
government failure: the case of Indonesia’s plantations policy 110
CHARLES PALMER AND KRYSTOF OBIDZINSKI
8 Will credits from avoided deforestation in developing
countries jeopardize the balance of the carbon market? 130
AXEL MICHAELOWA AND MICHAEL DUTSCHKE
PART III
Insights foreffective and efficient avoided deforestation policy 149
9 Leakage from avoided deforestation compensation policy:
concepts, empirical evidence and corrective policy options 151
BRIAN C. MURRAY
10 A scalable approach for setting avoided deforestation baselines 173
NANCY L. HARRIS, SILVIA PETROVA AND SANDRA BROWN
11 Human choices and policies’ impacts on ecosystem services:
improving evaluations of payment and park effects
on conservation and carbon 192
ALEXANDER PFAFF AND JUAN ROBALINO
12 Increasing the efficiency of forest conservation: the case of
payments for environmental services in Costa Rica 208
STEFANIE ENGEL, TOBIAS WÜNSCHER AND SVEN WUNDER
13 Role of risk in targeting payments for environmental services 217
JENNIFER ALIX-GARCIA, ALAIN DE JANVRY AND ELISABETH SADOULET
14 Prospects for mitigating climate change through avoided
deforestation: conclusions and outlook 235
STEFANIE ENGEL AND CHARLES PALMER
Index 251
List of contributors
Jennifer Alix-Garcia, Assistant Professor of Economics, University of San
Francisco, USA.
Sandra Brown, Senior Program Officer, Ecosystem Services, Winrock
International, USA.
Mariano C. Cenamo, Executive Director, Institute for Conservation and
Sustainable Development of Amazonas (IDESAM), Brazil.
Alain de Janvry, Professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University
of California at Berkeley, USA.
MichaelDutschke, Senior Consultant Climate Change, Land Use and Bioenergy,
BioCarbon Consult, Germany.
StefanieEngel, Professor of Environmental Policy and Economics, ETH Zurich,
Switzerland.
Maryanne Grieg-Gran, Programme Director, Environmental Economics
Programme, International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED),
UK.
Nancy L. Harris, Senior Program Associate, Ecosystem Services, Winrock
International, USA.
Tracy Johns, Policy Advisor and Research Associate, Woods Hole Research
Center (WHRC), USA.
Georg Kindermann, Research Fellow, International Institute for Applied
Systems Analysis (IIASA), Austria.
AxelMichaelowa, Senior Founding Partner, Perspectives GmbH, Switzerland.
Paula F. Moreira, Research Associate, Amazon Institute for Environmental
Research (IPAM), Brazil.
PauloMoutinho, Research Coordinator and Senior Scientist, Amazon Institute for
Environmental Research (IPAM), Brazil.