Indufor Lecture: Economics of Climate Change and Deforestation by Maryanne Grieg-Gran, IIED, London This year's Indufor lecture at the Forest Science Day will be delivered by Maryanne Grieg-Gran on the Economics of Climate Change and Deforestation. The general theme of the Forest Science Day is "Adaptation to the Climate Change and Finland's Forests". The event is to be held in Helsinki on 23 October 2007, and it is organised by the Finnish Society of Forest Science.
23/10/2007
Maryanne Grieg-Gran, Director of the Environmental Economics Programme at IIED (International Institute for Environment and Development, UK) is brought to the Forest Science Day by Indufor Oy.
Indufor Oy is an independent Finnish consulting company, which advises private and public sectors, among other things, in climate change issues related to forestry.
Ms Grieg-Gran's message for the forest sector is that avoiding deforestation, particularly in tropical countries, could be a cost-effective means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. By paying landowners enough to compensate them for what they would have earned from the land over time if they had deforested it, incentives can be provided for conserving forest. But for compensation to be cost-effective it would be essential for governments to identify and target areas most at risk of deforestation. This is a major challenge.
Tropical deforestation is estimated to contribute 20-25% of global CO2 emissions each year, while global transports contribute only about 13.5%. Therefore it is surprising, how little avoided deforestation is addressed in the international toolboxes against climate change.
Tropical forests have particularly high carbon stocks, holding on average 50% more carbon per hectare than forests in temperate and boreal areas. They are also experiencing the highest rates of deforestation. The Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates deforestation to equal 13 million hectares per year, most of it in tropical countries. It is surprising therefore that deforestation in tropical countries has been given so little space in the flexibility mechanisms of the Kyoto protocol. The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) notably allows credits for afforestation and reforestation but not for avoided deforestation. There has also been increasing attention to deforestation recently and several calls from governments of countries with tropical forest, notably Papua New Guinea, for financial mechanisms to provide positive incentives for developing countries to reduce their emissions from deforestation. Such proposals raise questions about the scale of finance needed and the cost of reducing deforestation compared with other mitigation options such as energy efficiency. Maryanne Grieg-Gran will present estimates of these costs drawing from background research she carried out for the Stern Review of the Economics of Climate Change.
Recent Publications by Maryanne Grieg-Gran
Grieg-Gran, M. (2006) "The costs of avoiding Deforestation". Background paper for the Stern Review of the Economics of Climate Change.
Grieg-Gran, M. (2006) Is tackling deforestation a cost-effective mitigation approach? Sustainable Development Opinion Papers, IIED.
Grieg-Gran, M., Porras, I. & Wunder, S. (2005) "How Can Market Mechanisms for Forest Environmental Services Help the Poor? Preliminary Lessons from Latin America". World Development, Vol. 33, No. 9, pp. 1511-1527.
Further Information
Olli Haltia, CEO, Indufor Oy, tel. +358 40 901 0338, email: olli.haltia(at)indufor.fi
Maryanne Grieg-Gran, IIED, email: maryanne.grieg-gran(at)iied.org