Jonah Busch et al 2009 Environ. Res. Lett. 4 044006 doi:10.1088/1748-9326/4/4/044006
Jonah Busch1,6, Bernardo Strassburg2,3, Andrea Cattaneo4, Ruben Lubowski5, Aaron Bruner6, Richard Rice6, Anna Creed3, Ralph Ashton3 and Frederick Boltz6
Show affiliationsThe climate benefit and economic cost of an international mechanism for reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) will depend on the design of reference levels for crediting emission reductions. We compare the impacts of six proposed reference level designs on emission reduction levels and on cost per emission reduction using a stylized partial equilibrium model (the open source impacts of REDD incentives spreadsheet; OSIRIS). The model explicitly incorporates national incentives to participate in an international REDD mechanism as well as international leakage of deforestation emissions. Our results show that a REDD mechanism can provide cost-efficient climate change mitigation benefits under a broad range of reference level designs. We find that the most effective reference level designs balance incentives to reduce historically high deforestation emissions with incentives to maintain historically low deforestation emissions. Estimates of emission reductions under REDD depend critically on the degree to which demand for tropical frontier agriculture generates leakage. This underscores the potential importance to REDD of complementary strategies to supply agricultural needs outside of the forest frontier.
Issue 4 (October-December 2009)
Received 17 August 2009, accepted for publication 2 October 2009
Published 16 October 2009
Jonah Busch et al 2009 Environ. Res. Lett. 4 044006
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