Carbon Markets a Boon for Forests?

Center for International Forestry ResearchA logging company worker in East Kalimantan, Indonesia. A study finds that countries could make as much or more money by preserving their forest land, rather than developing it.

Preserving forests might make economic sense for governments and forest dwellers, and it could also help preserve the habitats of endangered mammals like orangutans and elephants, according to a study released this week.

The study, published in the journal Conservation Letters, is part of a larger effort by conservation organizations to protect tropical forests from the industries that threaten them by using charismatic species to harness public support and generate money for conservation.

The study is also part of a battle over how to manage the world’s forests — a debate likely to be a key part of the negotiations over a successor treaty to the Kyoto climate treaty at a United Nations conference in Copenhagen in December.

“We now need to see policy discussions catch up with the science, because at the moment the potential co-benefits of linking forest protection to biodiversity are not getting the attention they deserve,” Oscar Venter, a biologist at the University of Queensland in Australia and the lead author of the study, said in a statement on Friday.

Mr. Venter and his colleagues used the example of Kalimantan, in Indonesian Borneo, to examine whether clearing the land for more oil palm plantations or paying to conserve the forest would offer greater value.

The researchers found that paying to conserve the forest was more valuable than plantations as long as poorer nations could earn $10 to $33 for each metric ton of CO₂ saved. Currently a credit representing a metric ton of CO₂sells for about $20 in the European Union, which has the world’s largest greenhouse gas trading system.

In addition, the researchers found that peat forest areas, where stored carbon is most abundant and thus cheapest to manage, contained almost twice the mammal species density as other areas of forest.

Buying carbon credits even “at a relatively low price could carry benefits for both climate change and biodiversity in some very important areas,” said Douglas Sheil, a co-author of the study and previously a scientist at theCenter for International Forestry Research.

“Now we need to see if these opportunities exist in other regions,” he said.