Tag Archives: REDD

In continuation with the SimPachamama launch month at INESAD, this week has seen a number of articles published around the topics of gaming, deforestation and climate change:

What would it cost to implement deforestation reduction policies in Bolivia?

By Ioulia Fenton

In conjunction with its partners, the Institute for Advanced Development Studies (INESAD) has designed statistical tools, using extensive real life data, to simulate what kinds of policies are likely to make a measurable impact on reducing deforestation while maximizing human wellbeing in Bolivia. As the “How to Live Well in Bolivia” infographic released by INESAD earlier this month illustrates, two policies working in tandem are predicted to have the best results. An internal US$450 tax on every hectare of cleared forest, structured in a way as to mainly affect large-scale commercial agriculture, could raise one billion dollars every four years and kick start deforestation reduction efforts. While laudable on its own, the policy would not be enough. A matching system of payments from rich countries to Bolivia for reducing deforestation that would raise an additional one billion dollars every two years is predicted to act as a catalyst. If the money is then spent on paying people to conserve their forests, on creating green jobs (such as within the eco-tourism sector), and financing anti-poverty initiatives, every year, together, the dual policy effort is forecast to engage 72 percent of the rural population, increase the income of the poor who participate by 29 percent, and achieve a 29 percent reduction in deforestation. (Play the SimPachamama simulation game to see if you can keep forests standing while making the community happy and wealthy). Read More »

Leelo en español AQUÍ 

BOOK REVIEW

Upsetting the Offset: The Political Economy of Carbon Markets

Mayfly Books.

By Ioulia Fenton

Let’s say you live in a fairly rich country and you are actually quite well off. You use lots of paper in your job, drive a car, heat and air-condition your house, and regularly fly for work, vacation, and to see your family in another country. You know that this causes tons of greenhouse gases (GHGs) to be released into the atmosphere, which is driving climate change, and that if everyone in the world had your kind of a lifestyle then we’d need five planets, not one, to survive. So you decide that you want to do something about it. Even though you have started to recycle, have put energy saving light bulbs in your house, bought a Prius, and always carry your water bottle and coffee thermos flask, somehow you feel that this is not enough: the Carbon Footprint Calculator still tells you that your kind of life needs more than four planets. Read More »

By Ben Groom

To try to begin to save what’s left of the world’s forests it is important to first ask: Who deforests and why? While this varies considerably in different contexts, some broad patterns exist. Loggers and farmers or cattle ranchers are the ‘actors’ that typically clear forests, but what they do to their land is determined by the political and economic systems that they find themselves in: the prevailing institutions, markets and policies. Chief among the institutional determinants are property rights: that is who owns the rights to the land and timber and how this ownership is regulated and enforced. Of the many economic determinants, the nature of land markets, local labor markets, and migration in and out of the locale are key. Where institutions are weak and markets fail to reflect the full economic value of standing forest cause for concern is warranted. Read More »

According to a recent study funded by the World Bank and published in Science magazine, tropical land use change was responsible for 7 to 14 percent of gross human-induced carbon emissions between 2000 and 2005. Forests are valuable storage places for large amounts of carbon dioxide, which contributes to global warming when it enters the earth’s atmosphere. This is because plants absorb carbon dioxide (CO₂) and transform it into energy necessary for growing in a process called photosynthesis (for details, see the May 2013 Exactly how to trees fight climate change article by Institute for Advanced Development Studies (INESAD) researcher Tracey Li). Land use changes such as clearing forests for agriculture or construction mean that forests are less able to extract CO₂ from the atmosphere and store it. Additionally, burning trees—which, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) are made up of around 50 percent carbon—to clear land releases the carbon that was previously stored in the them.

Read More »

Léelo en español AQUÍ  

By Valerie Giesen*

According to a recent study funded by the World Bank and published in Science magazine, tropical land use change was responsible for 7 to 14 percent of gross human-induced carbon emissions between 2000 and 2005. Forests are valuable storage places for large amounts of carbon dioxide, which contributes to global warming when it enters the earth’s atmosphere. This is because plants absorb carbon dioxide (CO₂) and transform it into energy necessary for growing in a process called photosynthesis (for details, see the Exactly how do trees fight climate change article by Institute for Advanced Development Studies (INESAD) researcher Tracey Li). Land use changes such as clearing forests for agriculture or construction mean that forests are less able to extract CO₂ from the atmosphere and store it. Additionally, burning trees—which, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) are made up of around 50 percent carbon—to clear land releases the carbon that was previously stored in the them. Read More »

Dr. Lykke Andersen gave a keynote speech entitled “A Theoretical Background to Land Use Change and Social-Ecological System Modeling in SimPachamama” during a two-day workshop on “Using Agent-Based Models to Project Possibilities for REDD+ Policies” held at the University of Florida on April 24-25, 2013.

One of the goals of the workshop was to discuss in which directions to expand and improve INESAD’s Simpachamama – a didactic game that is used as a tool for the participatory design of effective, efficient and equitable policies to reduce deforestation and rural poverty in Bolivia. Click HERE for a description of the game.

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Many economic mechanisms have been put forward to try to better manage natural resources. The UN Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (UN-REDD), for example, aims to put a financial value on the carbon stored in rainforests and incentivise developing countries to maintain them. Other systems in place give tax credits and other incentives to businesses for becoming more sustainable, but how ready are they to count their own carbon emissions? This is the question that Epicor asked in a survey of almost 1,000 companies from across the world earlier this year. The result? An inforgraphic that reveals fascinating facts like 58 percent of businesses had never even heard of carbon accounting: Read More »

The Bolivian government has taken a strong stance against the international REDD+ mechanism, mainly because it reduces forests to a simple commodity to be traded in international carbon emissions markets. This would not only imply trading an invisible product (CO₂ emissions), but – even more complicated – trading the lack of the invisible product (reduced CO₂ emissions). Keeping track of the lack of this invisible product is so obviously difficult that both transaction costs and corruption associated with an international REDD+ mechanism would likely be enormous, thus leaving few benefits for the forest, the forest communities, and the global climate. Read More »