Forest Carbon Leakage Quantification Methods and Their Suitability for Assessing Leakage in REDD

Sabine Henders,Madelene Ostwald

doi:10.3390/f3010033

Abstract

This paper assesses quantification methods for carbon leakage from forestry activities for their suitability in leakage accounting in a future Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) mechanism. To that end, we first conducted a literature review to identify specific pre-requisites for leakage assessment in REDD. We then analyzed a total of 34 quantification methods for leakage emissions from the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS), the Climate Action Reserve (CAR), the CarbonFix Standard (CFS), and from scientific literature sources. We screened these methods for the leakage aspects they address in terms of leakage type, tools used for quantification and the geographical scale covered. Results show that leakage methods can be grouped into nine main methodological approaches, six of which could fulfill the recommended REDD leakage requirements if approaches for primary and secondary leakage are combined. The majority of methods assessed, address either primary or secondary leakage; the former mostly on a local or regional and the latter on national scale. The VCS is found to be the only carbon accounting standard at present to fulfill all leakage quantification requisites in REDD. However, a lack of accounting methods was identified for international leakage, which was addressed by only two methods, both from scientific literature.

Highlights

After its exclusion from the Kyoto Protocol in 2003, forest conservation in developing countries was brought up again as a potential and potent mitigation option at the climate talks during COP 11, 2005 in Montreal, in the form of a proposed mechanism for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) [1]
Contributing to the scientific and carbon-market debate of how to address leakage from forest conservation activities, in this paper we examine specific requirements that we consider essential for leakage accounting in REDD, and analyze existing leakage quantification methods to assess whether they match these requirements and are suitable to address leakage from
Under a REDD mechanism, producers of commodities such as palm oil, timber or beef could shift to regions that do not participate in REDD [10,16,46], creating further primary leakage

Summary

Introduction

After its exclusion from the Kyoto Protocol in 2003, forest conservation in developing countries was brought up again as a potential and potent mitigation option at the climate talks during COP 11, 2005 in Montreal, in the form of a proposed mechanism for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) [1]. At COP 13 in Bali the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) asked parties and international organizations to promote REDD through pilot projects and capacity building This request has been followed by a frantic acceleration of work trying to understand and reduce the hurdles for such a mechanism [2]. The IPCC defines leakage as “the unanticipated decrease or increase in GHG benefits outside of the project’s accounting boundary (...) as a result of the project activities” [6] While this definition is mainly geared at local scale emission reduction project activities, leakage can occur when emissions regulations or policies are adopted in one place, and emissions shift to elsewhere where this policy is not effective [7]

Methods

Results

Conclusion