Abstract
Reducing emissions from agriculture, forestry, and other land uses is considered an essential ingredient of an effective strategy to mitigate global warming. Required changes in land use and forestry, however, often imply foregoing returns from locally more attractive resource use strategies. We assess and compare the prospects of mitigating climate change through emission reductions from forestry and agriculture in the Brazilian Amazon. We use official statistics, literature, and case study material from both old and new colonization frontiers to identify the scope for emission reductions, in terms of potential additionality, opportunity costs, technological complexity, transaction costs, and risks of economic and environmental spillover effects. Our findings point to a comparative advantage in the Brazilian Amazon of forest conservation-based over land-use modifying mitigation options, especially in terms of higher potential additionality in emission reductions. Low-cost mitigation options do exist also in use-modifying agriculture and forestry, but tend to be technologically complex thus requiring more costly intervention schemes. Our review points to a series of regional development deficits that may come to hamper attempts to tap into the large-scale climate change mitigation potential often associated with the Amazon. Low-hanging fruits for mitigation do exist, but must be carefully identified based on the performance indicators we discuss.
Highlights
Under the emissions from agriculture, forestry and other land uses (AFOLU), reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) is expected to tap the large mitigation potential of conserving and better managing the world’s forests, predominantly in tropical countries
Assessing the mitigation potential of alternative AFOLU options first requires looking at envisaged changes in carbon stocks, as well as other emission sources
AFOLU alternatives can differ in terms of carbon stored in the below- and above-ground biomass that vary over time due to land-cover change, growth, fire, and harvest/management cycles
Summary
Under the emissions from agriculture, forestry and other land uses (AFOLU), reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) is expected to tap the large mitigation potential of conserving and better managing the world’s forests, predominantly in tropical countries. This paper seeks to identify possible low-hanging fruits for climate change mitigation among dominant AFOLU activities and popular alternatives in the Brazilian Amazon region Based on this scoping assessment, we point to some implications for the design of intervention strategies. In countries with large Amazon territories (Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru), combined AFOLU emissions account for over 83% of total GHG emissions, representing the single most important sector for climate change mitigation in the region [11]. Considerable research has been done on the prospects of use-restricting conservation schemes in the Amazon, and on potential use-modifying technological fixes to high GHG emissions, e.g., on intensified cattle production, minimum-tillage cropping, agro-forestry, sustainable forest management, and reduced impact logging. We briefly discuss likely spillover effects for selected options
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