Climate Change

Climate Change: Financing Global Forestsis an independent report commissioned by the UK Prime Minister that assesses the impact of global forest loss on climate change and explores the future role of forests in the international climate change framework, with particular emphasis on the role of international finance. It also looks at the economic and policy drivers of deforestation and describes the incentives required to ensure more sustainable production of agriculture and timber in order to meet global demand while reducing carbon emissions. The report includes new modelling and analysis of the global economic impact of continued deforestation and shows that the benefits of halving deforestation could amount to $3.7 trillion over the long term. However, if the international community does not act, the global economic cost of climate change caused by deforestation could amount to $12 trillion. This comprehensive and detailed report makes a clear and forceful case for forests to be included in international carbon trading mechanisms. It calls for the international community to support forest nations to halve deforestation by 2020 and to make the global forest sector carbon neutral by 2030.

Preface	p. ix
Background papers	p. xi
Acknowledgements	p. xiii
Executive summary	p. xv
Introduction	p. 1
The impacts of climate change	p. 2
Climate change mitigation	p. 5
Forests and climate change	p. 6
Forest communities and ecosystem services	p. 8
The scope of this Review	p. 10
The challenge of deforestation
Forests, climate change and the global economy	p. 15
Forests and the carbon cycle	p. 16
Impacts of human activities on the forest carbon cycle	p. 18
Impacts of forests on climate change	p. 23
Modelling future impacts	p. 26
Conclusion	p. 33
The drivers of deforestation	p. 35
Why are trees being cut down?	p. 36
Population growth and wealth creation	p. 37
Growing demand for agricultural products and timber	p. 39
Current economic incentives for landowners to deforest	p. 41
Policy incentives	p. 42
Land tenure	p. 44
Capacity	p. 45
Forest transitions over time	p. 47
Conclusion	p. 48
Sustainable production and poverty reduction	p. 49
Introduction	p. 50
Land availability	p. 50
A vision of sustainable production	p. 52
Sustainable production and conservation	p. 53
Infrastructure and alternative employment	p. 58
Forest conservation	p. 60
Key levers for shifting to more sustainable production	p. 62
Conclusion	p. 68
The costs of mitigation	p. 69
Introduction	p. 70
Up-front and ongoing mitigation costs	p. 70
Ongoing forest emissions reduction costs	p. 71
Estimating the opportunity costs of avoided deforestation	p. 72
Estimating the costs of purchasing forest emissions abatement	p. 75
The benefits of taking action to reduce forest emissions	p. 77
Conclusion	p. 80
Forests and the international climate change framework: the long-term goal
A long-term framework for tackling climate change	p. 83
Overall framework for tackling climate change	p. 84
Criteria for a successful climate change framework	p. 85
Comparison of options for achieving global climate stabilisation	p. 90
Rationale for including forests within a global cap and trade system	p. 95
Four key elements of a long-term framework	p. 98
Conclusion	p. 99
The current international climate change framework	p. 101
Current international action	p. 102
The United Nations Rio Conventions	p. 102
The importance of the Kyoto Protocol	p. 107
Limitations of the first Kyoto commitment period	p. 111
Bali Action Plan	p. 117
Conclusion	p. 117
The building blocks of forest financing: the medium-term approach
Transition to a long-term framework	p. 121
Introduction	p. 122
Types of transition path	p. 123
A three-stage transition process: short, medium and long term	p. 125
Conclusion	p. 127
Effective targets for reducing forest emissions	p. 129
Introduction	p. 130
Baseline level	p. 130
Determining the baseline	p. 133
Baseline trajectories	p. 141
Conclusion	p. 143
Measuring and monitoring emissions from forests	p. 145
The importance of robust measuring and monitoring	p. 146
Measuring carbon stocks in forests	p. 147
Monitoring and verifying emissions and sequestration	p. 155
International and national approaches to measuring and monitoring	p. 159
Capacity building: expertise and costs	p. 162
Conclusion	p. 164
Linking to carbon markets	p. 165
Introduction	p. 167
Carbon markets: supply and demand	p. 168
Price impacts of linking forest credits to emissions trading schemes	p. 174
Scale of carbon market finance for forest abatement	p. 182
Linking mechanism	p. 184
Conclusion	p. 189
Governance and distribution of finance	p. 191
Introduction	p. 192
National-level governance	p. 192
Distribution of finance	p. 196
International governance	p. 205
Conclusion	p. 210
International action, capacity building and short-term funding
The funding gap and capacity building	p. 213
Introduction	p. 214
Research, analysis and knowledge sharing	p. 214
Policy and institutional reform	p. 216
Demonstration activities	p. 219
Meeting the funding gap	p. 222
Coordination and governance of public funding	p. 229
Conclusion	p. 232
Conclusions	p. 233
Introduction	p. 234
The forest sector in a global climate change deal	p. 234
International cooperation to support capacity building	p. 236
Coordinated international action to deliver finance effectively	p. 237
Conclusion	p. 238
Bibliography	p. 241
Index	p. 251
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