High-resolution forest carbon stocks and emissions in the Amazon

In December 2010, parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) agreed to encourage reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from forest losses with the financial support of developed countries. This important international agreement followed about seven years of effort among governments, non-governmental organizations (NGO) and the scientific community, and is called REDD+, the program for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation. REDD+ could achieve its potential to slow emissions from deforestation and forest degradation either as a new market option to offset emissions from developed nations, or as a mitigation option for developing countries themselves. Aside from representing an important step towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions, a growing list of potential co-benefits to REDD+ include improved forestry practices, forest restoration, sustainable development, and biodiversity protection. Indeed the agreement is heralded as a win–win for climate change mitigation and tropical forest conservation, and it could end up contributing to a global economy based on carbon and ecosystem services.

Carbon emissions from tropical deforestation have long been recognized as a key component of the global carbon budget, and more recently of our global climate system. Tropical forest clearing accounts for roughly 20% of anthropogenic carbon emissions and destroys globally significant carbon sinks (IPCC 2007). Global climate policy initiatives are now being proposed to address these emissions and to more actively include developing countries in greenhouse gas mitigation (e.g. Santilli et al 2005, Gullison et al 2007). In 2005, at the Conference of the Parties (COP) in Montreal, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) launched a new initiative to assess the scientific and technical methods and issues for developing policy approaches and incentives to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) in developing countries (Gullison et al 2007).Over the last two years the methods and tools needed to estimate reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation have quickly evolved, as the scientific community responded to the UNFCCC policy needs. This focus issue highlights those advancements, covering some of the most important technical issues for measuring and monitoring emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and emphasizing immediately available methods and data, as well as future challenges.Elements for effective long-term implementation of a REDD mechanism related to both environmental and political concerns are discussed in Mollicone et al. Herold and Johns synthesize viewpoints of national parties to the UNFCCC on REDD and expand upon key issues for linking policy requirements and forest monitoring capabilities. In response to these expressed policy needs, they discuss a remote-sensing-based observation framework to start REDD implementation activities and build historical deforestation databases on the national level. Achard et al offer an assessment of remote sensing measurements across the world's tropical forests that can provide key consistency and prioritization for national-level efforts. Gibbs et al calculate a range of national-level forest carbon stock estimates that can be used immediately, and also review ground-based and remote sensing approaches to estimate national-level tropical carbon stocks with increased accuracy.These papers help illustrate that methodologies and tools are indeed available to estimate emissions from deforestation. Clearly, important technical challenges remain (e.g. quantifying degradation, assessing uncertainty, verification procedures, capacity building, and Landsat data continuity) but we now have a sufficient technical base to support REDD early actions and readiness mechanisms for building national monitoring systems.Thus, we enter the COP 13 in Bali, Indonesia with great hope for a more inclusive climate policy encompassing all countries and emissions sources from both land-use and energy sectors. Our understanding of tropical deforestation and carbon emissions is improving and with that, opportunities to conserve tropical forests and the host of ecosystem services they provide while also increasing revenue streams in developing countries through economic incentives to avoid deforestation and degradation.ReferencesGullison R E et al 2007 Tropical forests and climate policy Science 316 985–6 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2007 Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis: Summary for Policymakers http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-spm.pdf Santilli M et al 2005 Tropical deforestation and the Kyoto Protocol: an editorial essay Clim. Change 71 267–76 Focus on Tropical Deforestation and Greenhouse Gas Emissions ContentsPan-tropical monitoring of deforestation F Achard, R DeFries, H Eva, M Hansen, P Mayaux and H-J StibigMonitoring and estimating tropical forest carbon stocks: making REDD a reality Holly K Gibbs, Sandra Brown, John O Niles and Jonathan A FoleyElements for the expected mechanisms on 'reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation, REDD' under UNFCCC D Mollicone, A Freibauer, E D Schulze, S Braatz, G Grassi and S FedericiLinking requirements with capabilities for deforestation monitoring in the context of the UNFCCC-REDD process Martin Herold and Tracy JohnsReference scenarios for deforestation and forest degradation in support of REDD: a review of data and methods Lydia P Olander, Holly K Gibbs, Marc Steininger, Jennifer J Swenson and Brian C MurrayApplying the conservativeness principle to REDD to deal with the uncertainties of the estimates Giacomo Grassi, Suvi Monni, Sandro Federici, Frederic Achard and Danilo MolliconeIdentifying optimal areas for REDD intervention: East Kalimantan, Indonesia as a case study Nancy L Harris, Silvia Petrova, Fred Stolle and Sandra BrownA first map of tropical Africa's above-ground biomass derived from satellite imagery A Baccini, N Laporte, S J Goetz, M Sun and H Dong

Opportunities for REDD+ to minimise forest carbon emissions and mitigate climate change in Southeast Asia

The United Nations climate treaty may soon include a mechanism for compensating tropical nations that succeed in reducing carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, source of nearly one fifth of global carbon emissions. We review the potential for this mechanism [reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD)] to provoke ecological damages and promote ecological cobenefits. Nations could potentially participate in REDD by slowing clear‐cutting of mature tropical forest, slowing or decreasing the impact of selective logging, promoting forest regeneration and restoration, and expanding tree plantations. REDD could also foster efforts to reduce the incidence of forest fire. Potential ecological costs include the accelerated loss (through displaced agricultural expansion) of low‐biomass, high‐conservation‐value ecosystems, and substitution of low‐biomass vegetation by monoculture tree plantations. These costs could be avoided through measures that protect low‐biomass native ecosystems. Substantial ecological cobenefits should be conferred under most circumstances, and include the maintenance or restoration of (1) watershed functions, (2) local and regional climate regimes, (3) soils and biogeochemical processes, (4) water quality and aquatic habitat, and (5) terrestrial habitat. Some tools already being developed to monitor, report and verify (MRV) carbon emissions performance can also be used to measure other elements of ecosystem function, making development of MRV systems for ecological cobenefits a concrete possibility. Analysis of possible REDD program interventions in a large‐scale Amazon landscape indicates that even modest flows of forest carbon funding can provide substantial cobenefits for aquatic ecosystems, but that the functional integrity of the landscape's myriad small watersheds would be best protected under a more even spatial distribution of forests. Because of its focus on an ecosystem service with global benefits, REDD could access a large pool of global stakeholders willing to pay to maintain carbon in forests, thereby providing a potential cascade of ecosystem services to local stakeholders who would otherwise be unable to afford them.

With climate change, frequent forest fires and prolonged fire period occur all over the world. Moreover, carbon emission from forest fire affects the carbon cycle of the forest ecosystem. However, this effect varies by region with no uniform conclusions, and fewer comparative studies exist on such differences between regions. In this paper, net primary productivity (NPP) data MOD17A3 were used as an important parameter of forest carbon absorption, along with MODIS fire spot data MCD14DL and burned area data MCD64A1. Forest carbon lost under forest fire interference in the northeast and southwest natural forest areas of China was studied to explore the role of forest fire in the carbon cycle process and its differences in the unlike regions of China. Here, by means of kernel density analysis and M-K trend test, the characteristics of forest fires in China’s southwest and northeast forests were calculated. Forest carbon emission under forest fire disturbance was quantified by reference to the forest fire emission factor list. We show that (1) the total number of forest fire spots in the southwest region from 2001 to 2020 was 1.06 × 105, 1.28 times that of Northeast China. However, the total burned area in the southwest was only 67.84% of that in the northeast. (2) The total carbon emissions from forest fires in the southwest from 2001 to 2020 was 37,559.94 Gg, 10.77% larger than the northeast forest, CH4 and CO2 were 13.52% and 11.29% larger respectively. Moreover, the carbon emissions of forest fire in the northeast showed a downward trend, R2 = 0.16 (p < 0.1), while it remained basically unchanged in the southwest. The contribution of carbon emissions from forest fires changed with forest types, it was shown as: evergreen needleleaf forest (14.98%) > evergreen broadleaf forest (10.81%) > deciduous needleleaf forest (6.52%) > deciduous broadleaf forest (5.22%). (3) From 2001 to 2020, under the premise that the NPP both manifested upward trends, the NPP of the burned areas showed a significant downward trend in the southwest forest, with R2 = 0.42 (p < 0.05), while it increased in the northeast forest, with R2 = 0.37 (p < 0.05). It showed negative correlation between NPP of burned areas and forest fire carbon emissions, and forest fire disturbance had no significant effect on forest NPP in Northeast China, while net carbon loss occurred in Southwest China. In general, under different forest fire characteristics, NPP, which represents forest carbon uptake, and carbon emissions from forest fires show differences. The impact of forest fire disturbance on forest carbon process varies with regions. The study can provide some ideas on the effects of forest fire disturbance on climate change.

It is very important in accurately estimating the forests' carbon stock and spatial distribution in the regional scale because they possess a great rate in the carbon stock of the terrestrial ecosystem. Yet the current estimation of forest carbon stock in the regional scale mainly depends on the forest inventory data, and the whole process consumes too much labor, money and time. And meanwhile it has many negative influences on the forest carbon storage updating. In order to figure out these problems, this paper, based on High Accuracy Surface Modeling (HASM), proposes a forest vegetation carbon storage simulation method. This new method employs the output of LPJ-GUESS model as initial values of HASM and uses the inventory data as sample points of HASM to simulate the distribution of forest carbon storage in China. This study also adopts the seventh forest resources statistics of China as the data source to generate sample points, and it also works as the simulation accuracy test. The HASM simulation shows that the total forest carbon storage of China is 9.2405 Pg, while the calculated value based on forest resources statistics are 7.8115 Pg. The forest resources statistics is taken based on a forest canopy closure, and the result of HASM is much more suitable to the real forest carbon storage. The simulation result also indicates that the southwestern mountain region and the northeastern forests are the important forest carbon reservoirs in China, and they account for 39.82% and 20.46% of the country's total forest vegetation carbon stock respectively. Compared with the former value (1975-1995), it manifests that the carbon storage of the two regions do increase clearly. The results of this research show that the large-scale reforestation in the last decades in China attains a significant carbon sink.

A suitable system for estimating changes in carbon storage and carbon emissions from tropical forests was constructed to study the carbon sink function of the Hainan Tropical Rainforest National Park. This article takes Diaoluo Mountain Forest Area as an example. Inventory calculation of forest resources with the help of the calculation method of the provincial greenhouse gas inventory compilation guide. Carbon sink measurement model is constructed in Diaoluo Mountain Forest Area. Changes in forest carbon storage and carbon emissions in five different periods from 1998 to 2018 were calculated. The results show that the forest carbon storage in Diaoluo Mountain Forest Area was 6.4 T, 1.1T, 1.2 T, 1.5 T and 2.1 Tons in the past five periods. Arbor forest has the largest proportion of carbon storage and is dominant; Carbon emissions in the five periods were 497T, 545 T, 263 T, 21T and 19 Tons. The moral is that,the total amount of forest net carbon has increased continuously, arbor forest is an important dominant position of carbon storage,the main gas absorbed and emitted by forest carbon sinks is carbon dioxide,the trend of increasing carbon storage and reducing carbon emissions is significant.It is suggested to continuously improve the community structure and promote the development of the forest carbon sink industry through the establishment of national parks and scientific management. Social capital participates in protecting national parks. This can increase the number of carbon sinks in public rainforest parks.

Several studies suggested that forest fragmentation, which is an effect of deforestation, and edge effect have an impact on the biomas and carbon stock in tropical forest. For Amazon and Atlantic Forest biomes, most studies have shown using in situ measurements and remote sensing data that biomass and carbon stock reduce within the first 300 meter of a forest edge to its center. For the Cerrado biome, there is currently no consensus whether or not there is an edge effect on biomass and carbon stock. Therefore, this study aims to better analyze the forest fragmentation and edge effect on the vegetation, such as biomass-carbon stock and canopy greenness, in the Cerrado biome. The most common method used to assess the edge effects on vegetation in tropical forest is direct measurement, which is difficult to replicate, cost intensive and time consuming. Therefore, the use of satellite images may be an alternative to monitor vegetation cover within the context of edge effects. In order to monitor forest fragmentation and carbon storage in the Cerrado biome, different approaches were investigated with fragmented areas in the city of Nova Mutum- Mato Grosso: (1) mapping the different type of vegetation using optical and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) remote sensing images, (2) estimating the biomass and carbon stock from in situ measurements within the context of edge effect and (3) monitoring the edge effect over the long-term using time-series Landsat satellite images. 
\nFirst, the use of optical and SAR images to map the different types of vegetation in the transitional area between the Cerrado and Amazon biomes was investigated. Using this approach, the diverse vegetation types of the transition areas were studied. The findings indicated that by applying a supervised random forest classification, the highest overall accuracy and kappa coefficient were obtained by using only Sentinel 2A images for the classification process. However, out of the three classifications, two (Sentinel 2A with TanDEM-X and Sentinel 2A with Sentinel 1A) that used radar and optical images recorded the highest overall accuracy and kappa values. Bands 5, 11, and 12 from Sentinel 2A satellite image, texture images from Sentinel 1A cross-polarization, and coherence from TanDEM-X images were the most important variables that separated each vegetation class similar to the variable importance from the random forest algorithm. After obtaining a better understanding of the diverse vegetation types in the study area, we assessed the impact of fragmentation and edge effect on biomass and carbon stock using in situ measurements that were collected in July and August 2017. Using this approach, we investigated the woody components of tree layer and shrub layer by recording key variables such as the diameter at breast height (DBH), total tree-shrub height, wood density, basal area and tree species. Here, the DBH and the total tree-shrub height were the explanatory variables of the allometric model in the Cerradão. For the Cerrado denso on the other hand DBH and the wood density were the explanatory variables of the allometric model. In contrast to our working hypothesis, the results showed no significant differences in the quantity and the distribution of AGB and carbon stocks between edge and center of the fragments of both vegetation types. Rather, the results showed a significant difference for the AGB and aboveground carbon stocks between the two investigated vegetation types. We thus suggest that the edge effect on biomass patterns found in the Amazon cannot be compared with those of the Cerrado biome. It is important to stress that our analyzes were performed with a single measurement, therefore, to have a better understanding of these impacts, a long-term approach is required. The last analysis of this thesis was to evaluate the edge effect in the long-term based on NDVI values of the transitional area between the Cerrado and Amazon biomes. The method described in this study corroborates studies that assessed edge effect on vegetation within the Cerrado and Amazon biomes. In this study, we applied a different approach to investigate possible edge effects using vegetation index from freely available satellite images. Our results showed a positive significant change (p-value < 0.00005) via the NDVI values in relation to distance from the nearest edge. The closer the vegetation was to the edge, the lower their respective NDVI value. Furthermore, our results showed that long-term edge effect patterns found in the Amazon biome cannot be extrapolated to Cerrado. This observation is mainly due to the stabilization of NDVI trends after two years of deforestation within the area. This suggest that more studies are needed to adequately understand the dynamics of edge effect in Arc of Deforestation, which directly affect biomass and carbon estimations.
\nIn this thesis, different methods were used to assess edge effects on the vegetation, such as biomass-carbon stock and greenness, in the Amazon-Cerrado ecotone. In the small scale, using fieldwork data, we could not find any evidence that fragmentation affects the carbon stock, due to the fact that the natural resources of the Cerrado biome have been widely exploited within the past 50 years, and thus, has a general decreased in biomass and carbon stock in the edge and also the center of the fragment. However, we have significant results from remote sensing long-term data, in which the NDVI is affected by the forest fragmentation and edge effect on the vegetation (canopy greenness), the closer to the edge, the lower the NDVI value. This shows that the use of satellite images has allowed an analysis of a larger period compared to fieldwork. One explanation for these findings is that the natural resources of the Cerrado biome have been widely exploited within the past 50 years, and thus, has decreased an overall biomass and carbon stock in all areas, which was found in the fieldwork data due to the few samples that were measured. However, the use of satellite images has allowed an analysis of the fragmentation effect with a larger amount of samples compared to fieldwork. not only in the edges. These outcomes of this thesis provide a solid research direction for further studies on edge effect in the Amazon-Cerrado ecotone. Long-term analysis using both field data and remote sensing is required to fully understand the fragmentation and edge effects in the Cerrado.

Forest carbon storage is almost estimated by the ground survey data, there is a difficulty of huge statistical work and modeling complexity. To calculate forest carbon stocks in a quick and accurate way, which has been the current research focus in forestry both inside and outside of China. A new method is proposed by combining a little input parameters of the InVEST model with a large monitoring scale of remote sensing data. First, InVEST model was used to estimate regional carbon stocks according to forest type carbon data and according to raster data. Then this data was compared to the multistage carbon data from remote sensing data to achieve a dynamic monitoring of forest carbon stocks. This paper estimated and mapped carbon stock of the Qingyuan (a county) in 2009, according to the administrative division map can estimate the carbon storage of the scale of town and village. After estimated carbon reserves of Kengxi (a village) in 2009 and 2014, carbon difference method was adopted to dynamic monitoring of carbon sink. Results showed that the carbon sink estimated with the new method for Qiyuan(a county), Zhejiang, China was 3.274 3×107 Mg in 2009. Also, the carbon stock for Kengxi (a village) increased 1.780 3×104 Mg from 2009 to 2014. Compared to forest average carbon density, adding forest species average carbon storage and carbon sinks to forest carbon stock monitoring improved estimation precision of forest carbon stocks. This dynamic multi-dimensional method for monitoring forest carbon sinks being simple, convenient, user-friendly, and advantageous because it used less data input and visual output in the model, could be used in the county, township (town) and village forest carbon monitoring. [Ch, 5 fig. 4 tab. 32 ref.]

Land use land cover change (LULCC) is a global environmental trend that plays a key role in worldwide environmental change and sustainable development. Substantial disturbance resulting from natural and anthropogenic activities has been witnessed in sub-Sahara Africa (SSA) over the last four decades, which is mostly due to the increasing population being experienced in Africa. One-third of emitted greenhouse gases (GHG) are attributable to LULCC and agricultural activities most especially deforestation. Soil carbon sequestration has been considered as a possible strategy to counterbalance carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and mitigate global climate change, driven by rising concentrations of GHG in the atmosphere and global increase in temperature. The role of tropical Africa's forests in mitigating climate change has been widely acknowledged under the global treaties' Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) initiatives. More than two-thirds of the SSA population rely on forests and woodlands for their livelihoods. Despite the importance of forests, Sub-Saharan Africa, and even the entire African continent, is experiencing an acceleration in deforestation, leading to diminished ecosystem resilience. Subsistence and commercial agriculture accounted for 10% of total forest land loss in Africa (approximately 75 million ha) between 1990 and 2010. As a result, agricultural expansion alone accounts for 70–80% of Africa's total forest loss. The challenges of implementing a policy to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and foster conservation, sustainable management of forests, and enhancement of forest carbon stocks (REDD +) in the SSA includes interactions between a number of anthropogenic-induced factors and challenges. These factors, which are of various types (economic, institutional, etc.), cause loss of forest and forest degradation; and the challenges arising from finance, institutional and technical expertise hinder the appropriate design and implementation of national forest monitoring schemes. These challenges must be adequately addressed in order to accurately quantify the carbon budgets and implement an appropriate forest and carbon monitoring system for REDD + in SSA. Therefore, in meeting the REDD + initiatives in SSA, integrated land use management approach that enhances soil carbon sequestration potential should be given considerable systematic and scientific attention. In addition, political, socioeconomic and institutional factors that hinder sustainable forest management and land use system management must be addressed collectively.

Selective logging in the tropics is a major driver of forest degradation by altering forest structure and function, including significant losses of aboveground carbon. In this study, we used a 30-year Landsat time series (1985–2015) to analyze forest degradation and carbon emissions due to selective logging in a Forest Reserve of the Venezuelan Amazon. Our work was conducted in two phases: the first, by means of a direct method we detected the infrastructure related to logging at the sub-pixel level, and for the second, we used an indirect approach using buffer areas applied to the results of the selective logging mapping. Pre- and post-logging forest inventory data, combined with the mapping analysis were used to quantify the effects of logging on aboveground carbon emissions for three different sources: hauling, skidding and tree felling. With an overall precision of 0.943, we demonstrate the potential of this method to efficiently map selective logging and forest degradation with commission and omission errors of +7.6 ± 4.5 (Mean ± SD %) and −7.5% ± 9.1 respectively. Forest degradation due to logging directly affected close to 24,480 ha, or about ~1% of the total area of the Imataca Forest Reserve. On average, with a relatively low harvest intensity of 2.8 ± 1.2 trees ha−1 or 10.5 ± 4.6 m3 ha−1, selective logging was responsible for the emission of 61 ± 21.9 Mg C ha−1. Lack of reduced impact logging guidelines contributed to pervasive effects reflected in a mean reduction of ~35% of the aboveground carbon compared to unlogged stands. This research contributes to further improve our understanding of the relationships between selective logging and forest degradation in tropical managed forests and serves as input for the potential implementation of projects for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+).

Purpose: REDD is being criticized on several fronts and thus, there is a need for an integrated, comprehensive paradigm that incorporates emissions reduction, biodiversity conservation, and community development, and is leveraged towards sustainability in forests and livelihoods rather than narrower goals such as emissions reduction or conservation. Design/methodology/approach: A SWOT analysis of REDD is conducted and based on the results of the analysis, a new framework is proposed. Findings: Although REDD has enormous potential to not just reduce emissions but also provide significant co-benefits, there has also been criticism on various fronts. A new theoretical framework with carbon, conservation, and community as the three pillars has been proposed. Originality/value: The paper proposes a new paradigm that addresses GHG emission reduction, conservation of forests and biodiversity, community livelihoods support, and valuation of environmental services provided by forests. Forests, covering one-third of the earth’s surface, are home to more than half of the biodiversity on earth, provide multiple ecosystem services, and contribute to more than a billion livelihoods globally. However, forests have largely been mismanaged and remain one of the key challenges in international as well as national policy and governance. The dual role of forests in climate change, both as a source and sink of GHG emissions, adds to the urgency for action. Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) is being intensely discussed for its likely role in climate change mitigation. The argument had originated with avoided deforestation, subsequently broadened to REDD and is currently being discussed around REDD+, an indication that there is more to this debate than just incentivizing emissions reduction. Although REDD has enormous potential to not just reduce emissions but also provide significant co-benefits, there has also been criticism on various fronts. The author proposes the climate, community, conservation, and sustainability (C3S) paradigm which would include objectives such as GHG emissions reduction, valuation of environmental services provided by forests, conservation of forests and biodiversity, and community livelihoods support.KeywordsClimate changeFrameworkREDDSWOT

Carbon emissions from deforestation and degradation account for about 20% of globalanthropogenic emissions. Strategies and incentives for reduced emissions from deforestationand degradation (REDD) have emerged as one of the most active areas in the internationalclimate change negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on ClimateChange (UNFCCC). While the current negotiations focus on a REDD mechanism indeveloping countries, it should be recognized that risks of carbon losses from forests occurin all climate zones and also in industrialized countries. A future climate changeagreement would be more effective if it included all carbon losses and gains fromland use in all countries and climate zones. The REDD mechanism will be animportant step towards reducing emissions from land use change in developingcountries, but needs to be followed by steps in other land use systems and regions.A national approach to REDD and significant coverage globally are needed todeal with the risk that deforestation and degradation activities are displacedrather than avoided. Favourable institutional and governance conditions need to beestablished that guarantee in the long-term a stable incentive and control system formaintaining forest carbon stocks. Ambitious emission reductions from deforestation andforest degradation need sustained financial incentives, which go beyond positiveincentives for reduced emissions but also give incentives for sustainable forestmanagement. Current data limitations need—and can be—overcome in the comingyears to allow accurate accounting of reduced emissions from deforestation anddegradation. A proper application of the conservativeness approach in the REDDcontext could allow a simplified reporting of emissions from deforestation in afirst phase, consistent with the already agreed UNFCCC reporting principles.

Mapping forest dynamics in Bangladesh from satellite images: implications for the global REDD+ program

Protected area downgrading, downsizing and degazettement (PADDD) is a global phenomenon that has not received formal attention in Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) policies designed to reduce forest carbon emissions and conserve biodiversity. Here, we examine how PADDD affects deforestation and forest carbon emissions. We documented 174 enacted and 8 proposed PADDD events affecting more than 48,000 km2 in three REDD+ priority countries: Democratic Republic of the Congo, Malaysia, and Peru. Where sufficient data were available, we estimated deforestation rates and the quantity and economic value of forest carbon already lost and at risk in three land tenure classes: PADDDed, protected, and never‐protected. PADDDed forests experienced deforestation and forest carbon emissions greatly exceeding rates in protected areas and slightly exceeding rates in never‐protected forests. PADDD represents business‐as‐usual for protected areas, posing substantial risk to forests and forest carbon stocks. REDD+ policies have substantive implications for protected area biodiversity and forest carbon emissions; the Warsaw Framework for REDD+ provides new, but insufficient, guidance for nations to address these issues.