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The financial costs of REDD : Evidence from Brazil and Indonesia

This study reviews the financial costs of abating greenhouse gas emissions through reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD). It is written from the perspective of an institutional investor seeking cost-effective climate mitigation options. A review of empirical data from Brazil and Indonesia suggests that REDD may, in many areas, provide a cost-effective climate mitigation option, with estimated costs lying in a range of US$ 2-10 per ton of CO2e.

via IUCN publications – The financial costs of REDD : Evidence from Brazil and Indonesia

New articles on land use change in the Brazilian Amazon

The latest issue of the Journal of Land Use Science features new studies on land use and land cover change in the Brazilian Amazon:

A case study of carbon fluxes from land change in the Southwest Brazilian Amazon
K. Barrett;  J. Rogan; J. R. Eastman

Land-use/land-cover change among rubber tappers in the Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve, Acre, Brazil
Jacqueline Michelle Vadjunec;  Carlos Valerio A. Gomes; Thomas Ludewigs

Modeling land use and land cover change in an Amazonian frontier settlement: strategies for addressing population change and panel attrition
Jill L. Caviglia-Harris;  Erin O. Sills;  Luke Jones;  Shubhayu Saha;  Daniel Harris;  Suzanne McArdle;  Dar Roberts;  Marcos Pedlowski; Rebecca Powell

New Tool to Help Reduce Deforestation in the Amazon

Contributed by Neil Palmer, CIAT (reposted from the  CGIAR Climate Change Blog)

A new online tool for studying land use in the Amazon should prove helpful for the development of projects on REDD (or reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation), an approach that gained ground during the United Nations Climate Change Conference held last month in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Developed by the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) and the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), the Amazon Initiative Interactive Map Server is the first freely available web-based application of its kind. Using satellite imagery and digital geographic information, it allows users to select specific areas of the Amazon and retrieve information about population density, biodiversity, land cover and rates of forest loss.

Of particular interest is the tool’s ability to help place a monetary value on forest conservation by helping estimate the opportunity cost of REDD (i.e., the value of alternative land uses that would be given up to conserve forest) in an area selected by the user. The application also calculates simulated future deforestation rates, biomass density and other information, which can help pinpoint pressures on forests and determine their impacts on carbon storage and other ecosystem services.

CIAT researcher Glenn Hyman is delighted by the release of the trial version of the application. “This is the first application that puts this type of analysis online in an easy-to-use format,” he said. “Its beauty is its simplicity. There is no software to download, and you don’t have to be a GIS expert or economic modeler – all you need is a web browser.”

According to Jan Borner, an agricultural economist with the World Bank-funded Amazon Initiative: “This tool provides access to the data and basic methodological approaches used during [studies on ecosystem service management in the Amazon]. We encourage user feedback from our online forum in order to better tailor the application to their needs.”

Roads are ruining the rainforests

In an opinion piece, Professor William Laurance (Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute), points to road expansion as a major driver of deforestation in the Amazon, and suggests that restricting new roads would be “realistic” and “cost-effective” approach for curbing deforestation.

In remote frontier areas, where law enforcement is often weak, new roads can open a Pandora’s box of other problems, such as illegal logging, colonisation and land speculation. In Brazilian Amazonia, 95 per cent of deforestation and fires occur within 50 kilometres of roads. In Suriname, most illegal gold mines are located near roads. In tropical Africa, hunting is significantly more intensive near roads.

Source: Roads are ruining the rainforests – opinion – 30 August 2009 – New Scientist.

In search of rainforests’ El Dorado

In a BBC opinion piece, Andrew Mitchell, founder and director of the Global Canopy Programme, makes an emphatic argument for valuing the Amazon for the carbon in the trees.

I believe the credit crunch, climate change, and consumer appetites are creating a crucial tipping point in this historical debate, which will determine how the world’s political process deals with the erosion one of the greatest natural capital assets on Earth.

Source: BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | In search of rainforests’ El Dorado.