The opportunity costs of reducing carbon emissions in an Amazonian agro-industrial region: the Xingu River headwater
Claudia
M
Stickler, University of Florida; Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazonia; Woods Hole Research Center, cstickle@ufl.edu
(Presenting)
Daniel
C
Nepstad, Woods Hole Research Center; Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazonia, dnepstad@whrc.org
Britaldo
S
Soares-Filho, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais; Woods Hole Research Center, britaldo@csr.ufmg.br
Frank
Merry, Woods Hole Research Center, fmerry@whrc.org
Wayne
S
Walker, Woods Hole Research Center, wwalker@whrc.org
Maria
S
Bowman, Woods Hole Research Center, mbowman@whrc.org
Josef
Kellndorfer, Woods Hole Research Center, josefk@whrc.org
Oriana
T
Almeida, Universidade Federal do Para; Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazonia, oriana@ufpa.br
Hermann
O
Rodrigues, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, hermann@csr.ufmg.br
Negotiations are proceeding for a new international climate change regime that will compensate tropical nations that reduce their carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. In anticipation of this new mechanism designed to slow deforestation, regional projects to reduce tropical deforestation will provide important training grounds for developing deforestation-reduction programs that are compensated by the carbon market. One of the world’s largest regional forest carbon “products” is under development in the Xingu River headwaters region in the southeastern Brazilian Amazon. This approximately 177,000 km2 area contains the Xingu Indigenous Park at its core, home to 14 indigenous tribes. Surrounding the park is a rapidly expanding soy and cattle sector. We estimated annual deforestation-driven carbon emissions in this region for 2000 through 2007 as a basis for estimating the historical baseline of emissions. We then estimated the opportunity cost of maintaining forestlands using spatially-explicit rent models for soy production, cattle ranching, and sustainable timber harvest. We estimated a baseline of 10.9 million tons of annual carbon emissions. The average annual opportunity cost of reducing carbon emissions from deforestation to nearly zero was $270 million and $23 per ton of reduced carbon emission. Over a five year period, ca. 55 million tons of carbon emissions reductions could be achieved for a total opportunity cost (of foregone profits from soybean cultivation and ranching) of $1.2 billion. To provide each of 940 indigenous families in the Xingu Park with a subsidy of $2400 per family per year would cost $2,300,000 annually, which translates to a mere $0.06 per ton of carbon emission reductions. Given the historical baseline for deforestation in the Xingu region, it would take nearly 50 years to completely clear the forests outside protected areas, providing a long-term stream of revenue that is tied to ongoing success in maintaining forest carbon stocks.
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