Tropical Forest Protection, Uncertainty, and the Environmental Integrity of Carbon Mitigation Policies
Tropical Forest Protection, Uncertainty, and the Environmental Integrity of Carbon Mitigation Policies
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热带森林保护、不确定性和碳减排政策的环境完整性
DOI：
10.29310/wp.2004.03
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发表时间：
2004
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
A. Pfaff
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Suzi Kerr;Joanna Hendy;Shuguang Liu;A. Pfaff
据估计，由于砍伐森林，热带森林每年大约释放1.7PGC。避免热带森林砍伐可能会在未来50年(如果不是更长的话)在减缓碳排放方面发挥重要作用。许多政策制定者和谈判者对我们有效减少森林砍伐的能力持怀疑态度。他们担心，如果允许避免砍伐森林的信用额度取代化石燃料减排来遵守《京都议定书》，环境将受到影响，因为信用额度不会真正反映出额外的碳储存。本文考虑了估计碳储量和预测森林砍伐所涉及的不确定性的性质。我们构建了一个基于经验的随机模型，该模型结合了田间生态学数据、卫星图像地理信息系统(GIS)数据、经济分析和生态过程建模，以模拟这些不确定性对避免砍伐森林信用的环境完整性的影响。我们发现，土地利用的变化，以及由此产生的碳的额外性，极难准确预测，而且为避免砍伐森林而给予的信用额度的误差可能非常大。我们还发现，估计碳储量的误差可能很大，可能会产生重大影响。我们发现，在哥斯达黎加，几乎42%的环境完整性损失是由糟糕的碳估计引起的，这些损失发生在一个生命带--热带潮湿。这表明，研究工作可能集中在这一生命领域。
Tropical forests are estimated to release approximately 1.7 PgC per year as a result of deforestation. Avoiding tropical deforestation could potentially play a significant role in carbon mitigation over the next 50 years if not longer. Many policymakers and negotiators are skeptical of our ability to reduce deforestation effectively. They fear that if credits for avoided deforestation are allowed to replace fossil fuel emission reductions for compliance with Kyoto, the environment will suffer because the credits will not reflect truly additional carbon storage. This paper considers the nature of the uncertainties involved in estimating carbon stocks and predicting deforestation. We build an empirically based stochastic model that combines data from field ecology, geographical information system (GIS) data from satellite imagery, economic analysis and ecological process modeling to simulate the effects of these uncertainties on the environmental integrity of credits for avoided deforestation. We find that land use change, and hence additionality of carbon, is extremely hard to predict accurately and errors in the numbers of credits given for avoiding deforestation are likely to be very large. We also find that errors in estimation of carbon storage could be large and could have significant impacts. We find that in Costa Rica, nearly 42% of all the loss of environmental integrity that would arise from poor carbon estimates arises in one life zone, tropical wet. This suggests that research effort might be focused in this life zone.