The effect of carbon credits on savanna land management and priorities for biodiversity conservation.

Lucinda L Douglass,Kerrie A Wilson,Carissa J Klein,Jeremy Russell-Smith,Hugh P Possingham,Josie Carwardine,Stephen H Roxburgh,Julian Clifton

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0023843

Abstract

Carbon finance offers the potential to change land management and conservation planning priorities. We develop a novel approach to planning for improved land management to conserve biodiversity while utilizing potential revenue from carbon biosequestration. We apply our approach in northern Australia's tropical savanna, a region of global significance for biodiversity and carbon storage, both of which are threatened by current fire and grazing regimes. Our approach aims to identify priority locations for protecting species and vegetation communities by retaining existing vegetation and managing fire and grazing regimes at a minimum cost. We explore the impact of accounting for potential carbon revenue (using a carbon price of US$14 per tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent) on priority areas for conservation and the impact of explicitly protecting carbon stocks in addition to biodiversity. Our results show that improved management can potentially raise approximately US$5 per hectare per year in carbon revenue and prevent the release of 1–2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent over approximately 90 years. This revenue could be used to reduce the costs of improved land management by three quarters or double the number of biodiversity targets achieved and meet carbon storage targets for the same cost. These results are based on generalised cost and carbon data; more comprehensive applications will rely on fine scale, site-specific data and a supportive policy environment. Our research illustrates that the duel objective of conserving biodiversity and reducing the release of greenhouse gases offers important opportunities for cost-effective land management investments.

Highlights

Investment in habitat protection and sustainable land management is critical in preventing further loss and decline of biodiversity, given unprecedented rates of species extinction and environmental degradation [1,2,3]
Our approach enables answering the following questions: (i) where are the priority locations for implementing improved land management targeted at biodiversity conservation? (ii) how do these locations and costs change when the potential revenue generated by carbon sequestration is deducted from the costs of conservation action? and, (iii) what are the opportunities and costs of meeting targets for both biodiversity and carbon simultaneously? We demonstrate our approach using a case study within the tropical savannas of northern Australia
We provide an analysis framework capable of prioritising stewardship payments for improved land management to achieve biodiversity conservation goals within the context of an emerging carbon economy

Summary

Introduction

Investment in habitat protection and sustainable land management is critical in preventing further loss and decline of biodiversity, given unprecedented rates of species extinction and environmental degradation [1,2,3]. Targeted reduction of carbon emissions through avoided deforestation has been shown to benefit biodiversity even at a low carbon price of US$2–16 per tonne of CO2-e [7]. Many landscapes, such as tropical savannas, have large effects on carbon fluxes despite low levels of land clearing. These fluxes are caused by changes in fire and grazing regimes and habitat modification [8]. The potential biodiversity benefits resulting from managing existing habitat to increase carbon stocks in landscapes such as savannas remains largely untested

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Conclusion