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      The economic value of tropical forests in meeting global climate stabilization goals

      , ,
      Global Sustainability
      Cambridge University Press (CUP)

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          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Non-technical summary

          Conserving tropical forests has many benefits, from protecting biodiversity, sustaining indigenous and local communities, and safeguarding climate. To achieve the ambitious climate goals of the Paris Agreement, forest protection is essential. Yet deforestation continues to diminish the world's forests. Halting this trend is the objective of the international framework for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+). While previous studies have demonstrated the contribution of tropical forests to mitigate climate change, here we show that tropical forest protection can ‘flatten the curve’ of the costs of transition to climate stability, estimating tens of trillions of dollars in policy cost savings.

          Technical summary

          The pledges made by parties under the Paris Agreement are insufficient to limit global warming to well below 2 °C relative to pre-industrial levels. We use a global climate-economic model to quantify the economic benefits from rapidly deploying programs for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and increased reforestation (REDD+) given current delays in the implementation of climate policies around the world. REDD+ has been shown to have substantial greenhouse gas emissions mitigation potential in the fight against climate change and can thus play a critical role in closing the emissions gap, thereby enabling the achievement of more ambitious climate targets. Under our principal scenario, we estimate that REDD+ can contribute up to US$36 trillion in net policy cost savings by mitigating the adjustment costs of reaching a greenhouse gas emissions trajectory consistent with ambitious global climate stabilization goals. Investment in REDD+ has a high benefit-cost ratio; one dollar invested in REDD+ yields about US$5.4 in net policy cost savings. Realizing the full estimated potential for REDD+ reduces the risk-adjusted carbon price in 2030 by US$45/tCO 2.

          Social media summary

          Protecting tropical forests is crucial to achieve ambitious climate stabilization goals while saving trillions of dollars in economic value.

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          Natural climate solutions

          Significance Most nations recently agreed to hold global average temperature rise to well below 2 °C. We examine how much climate mitigation nature can contribute to this goal with a comprehensive analysis of “natural climate solutions” (NCS): 20 conservation, restoration, and/or improved land management actions that increase carbon storage and/or avoid greenhouse gas emissions across global forests, wetlands, grasslands, and agricultural lands. We show that NCS can provide over one-third of the cost-effective climate mitigation needed between now and 2030 to stabilize warming to below 2 °C. Alongside aggressive fossil fuel emissions reductions, NCS offer a powerful set of options for nations to deliver on the Paris Climate Agreement while improving soil productivity, cleaning our air and water, and maintaining biodiversity.
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            The marker quantification of the Shared Socioeconomic Pathway 2: A middle-of-the-road scenario for the 21st century

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              Revisiting the social cost of carbon

              The most important single economic concept in the economics of climate change is the social cost of carbon (SCC). At present, regulations with more than $1 trillion of benefits have been written for the United States that use the SCC in their economic analysis. The DICE model (Dynamic Integrated model of Climate and the Economy) is one of three integrated assessment models used to estimate the SCC in the United States. The present study presents updated estimates based on a revised DICE model (DICE-2016R). The study estimates that the SCC is $31 per ton of CO 2 in 2010 US\(for the current period (2015). This study will be an important step in developing the next generation of estimates of the SCC in the United States and other countries. The social cost of carbon (SCC) is a central concept for understanding and implementing climate change policies. This term represents the economic cost caused by an additional ton of carbon dioxide emissions or its equivalent. The present study presents updated estimates based on a revised DICE model (Dynamic Integrated model of Climate and the Economy). The study estimates that the SCC is \)31 per ton of CO 2 in 2010 US$ for the current period (2015). For the central case, the real SCC grows at 3% per year over the period to 2050. The paper also compares the estimates with those from other sources.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Journal
                Global Sustainability
                Glob. Sustain.
                Cambridge University Press (CUP)
                2059-4798
                2021
                December 04 2020
                2021
                : 4
                Article
                10.1017/sus.2020.34
                aec5cdda-b059-42fc-aa59-f891673adf78
                © 2021

                http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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