Climate change mitigation: a spatial analysis of global land suitability for Clean Development Mechanism afforestation and reforestation

Withinthe Kyoto Protocol,the clean developmentmechanism (CDM) isan instrument intended toreducegreenhousegas emissions,while assisting developing countries in achieving sustainable development, with the multiplegoals of poverty reduction, environmental benefits and cost-effective emission reductions. The CDM allows for a small percentage of emission reduction credits to come from afforestation and reforestation (CDM-AR) projects. We conducted a global analysis of land suitability for CDM-AR carbon ‘sink’ projects and identified large amounts of land (749 Mha) as biophysically suitable and meeting the CDM-AR eligibility criteria. Forty-six percent of all the suitable areas globallywere foundin SouthAmerica and27% in Sub-SaharanAfrica. In Asia,despite thelargerland mass,relativelyless landwasavailable. In South America and Sub-Saharan Africa the majority of the suitable land was shrubland/grassland or savanna. In Asia the majority of the land was low-intensity agriculture. The sociologic and ecological analyses showed that large amounts of suitable land exhibited relatively low population densities. Many of the most marginal areas were eliminated due to high aridity, which resulted in a generally Gaussian distribution of land productivity classes. If the cap on CDM-AR were raised to compensate for a substantially greater offset of carbon emission through sink projects, this study suggests that it will be increasingly important to consider implications on local to regional food security and local community livelihoods. # 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

[1]  W. Nordhaus.  The Cost of Slowing Climate Change: a Survey , 1991 .

[2]  K. Pinkau.  Annual Report 1997 , 1998 .

[3]  M. Jung.  Host Country Attractiveness for CDM Non-Sink Projects , 2005 .

[4]  Kristin Aunan,et al.  Tittel: Can the Clean Development Mechanism attain both cost-effectiveness and sustainable development objectives? Title: Can the Clean Development Mechanism attain both cost-effectiveness and sustainable development objectives? , 2001 .

[5]  J. Palutikof,et al.  Climate change 2007 : impacts, adaptation and vulnerability , 2001 .

[6]  L. Boorman,et al.  Climate change 1995—Impacts, adaptations and mitigation of climate change: Scientific-technical analyses: Contribution of working group II to the second assessment report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change , 1997 .

[7]  C. Forner,et al.  Future restrictions for sinks in the CDM: How about a cap on supply?☆ , 2002 .

[8]  M. Cannell,et al.  Carbon sequestration and biomass energy offset: theoretical, potential and achievable capacities globally, in Europe and the UK , 2003 .

[9]  L. Verchot,et al.  Implications of Country-Level Decisions on the Specification of Crown Cover in the Definition of Forests for Land Area Eligible for Afforestation and Reforestation Activities in the CDM , 2007 .

[10]  S. Nilsson,et al.  Management of forests for mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions , 1996 .

[11]  Antonio Trabucco,et al.  Trees and water: smallholder agroforestry on irrigated lands in Northern India , 2007 .

[12]  J. Scurlock,et al.  Terrestrial net primary productivity A brief history and a new worldwide database , 2002 .

[13]  Gregg Marland,et al.  Land use & global climate change : forests, land management and the Kyoto Protocol , 2000 .

[14]  S. Scherr,et al.  Forest carbon and local livelihoods: assessment of opportunities and policy recommendations , 2002 .

[15]  L. R. Oldeman,et al.  World map of the status of human-induced soil degradation: an explanatory note. , 1990 .

[16]  Belward Alan steven,et al.  Land Use Change Monitoring in the Framework of the UNFCCC and Its Kyoto Protocol. Report on Current Capabilities of Satellite Remote Sensing Technology , 2003 .

[17]  M. Jung.  The Role of Forestry Sinks in the CDM - Analysing the Effects Of Policy Decisions on the Carbon Market , 2003 .

[18]  L. Pedroni,et al.  Opportunities for linking adaptation and mitigation in agroforestry systems. , 2005 .

[19]  Sten Nilsson,et al.  The carbon-sequestration potential of a global afforestation program , 1995 .

[20]  S. Running,et al.  Global Terrestrial Gross and Net Primary Productivity from the Earth Observing System , 2000 .

[21]  J. Townshend,et al.  Global Percent Tree Cover at a Spatial Resolution of 500 Meters: First Results of the MODIS Vegetation Continuous Fields Algorithm , 2003 .

[22]  C. Körner,et al.  A world‐wide study of high altitude treeline temperatures , 2004 .

[23]  G. Watts,et al.  Climate Change 1995 , 1998 .

[24]  Sinks and the Kyoto protocol , 2001 .

[25]  Ramakrishna R. Nemani,et al.  Evaluation of remote sensing based terrestrial productivity from MODIS using regional tower eddy flux network observations , 2006, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing.

[26]  Ghillean T. Prance,et al.  Changes in the use and management of forests for abating carbon emissions: issues and challenges under the Kyoto Protocol , 2002, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences.

[27]  W. Cohen,et al.  Scaling Gross Primary Production (GPP) over boreal and deciduous forest landscapes in support of MODIS GPP product validation , 2003 .

[28]  Maosheng Zhao,et al.  Improvements of the MODIS terrestrial gross and net primary production global data set , 2005 .

[29]  J. L. Parra,et al.  Very high resolution interpolated climate surfaces for global land areas , 2005 .

[30]  L. Verchot,et al.  Climate change: linking adaptation and mitigation through agroforestry , 2007 .

[31]  H. Kolshus.  Carbon sequestration in sinks : an overview of potential and costs , 2001 .

[32]  W. Easterling,et al.  Greenhouse warming : abatement and adaptation , 1989 .

[33]  Bernhard Schlamadinger,et al.  Forest harvests and wood products: sources and sinks of atmospheric carbon dioxide. , 1998 .

[34]  R. Sedjo.  Climate and forests , 1989 .

[35]  George H. Hargreaves,et al.  Defining and Using Reference Evapotranspiration , 1994 .

[36]  David S. G. Thomas,et al.  World atlas of desertification. , 1994 .

[37]  S. Wood,et al.  Pilot analysis of global ecosystems: Agroecosystems , 2000 .

[38]  B. H. Janssen,et al.  Soil fertility in Africa is at stake , 1997 .

[39]  N. H. Ravindranath,et al.  Climate change mitigation in the energy and forestry sectors of developing countries , 1998 .

[40]  R. Moss,et al.  Climate change 1995 - impacts, adaptations and mitigation of climate change : scientific-technical analyses , 1997 .

[41]  Welcome to Climate Policy , 2001 .

[42]  Antonio Trabucco,et al.  Carbon, land and water: a global analysis of the hydrologic dimensions of climate change mitigation through afforestation / reforestation , 2006 .

[43]  M. Trexler,et al.  Keeping it green : tropical forestry opportunities for mitigating climate change , 1995 .

[44]  Y. Yamagata,et al.  Would forestation alleviate the burden of emission reduction , 2001 .

[45]  Knut H. Alfsen,et al.  The state of climate research and climate policy , 2001 .

[46]  Mark Rounsevell,et al.  Climate Change 1995: impacts, adaptations and mitigation of climate change: scientific-technical analyses. Contribution of Working Group II to the Second Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change , 1996 .

[47]  H. Lieth,et al.  OSNABRÜCK NET PRIMARY PRODUCTIVITY DATA SET , 2000 .

[48]  Antonio Trabucco,et al.  Climate change mitigation through afforestation/reforestation: A global analysis of hydrologic impacts with four case studies , 2008 .