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Carbon at $20 per tonne would change rain forest’s fate

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Vincent

It would take $20 per tonne of carbon dioxide sequestered by the Amazon to change the fate of the forest. This was the question posed by two Brazilian economists in a dialogue on the Amazon: Juliano Assunção, executive director of the Climate Policy Initiative (CPI-Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro), and José Alexandre Sheinkman (Columbia University): What carbon price would induce the government and rural producers to trade extensive cattle ranching for large-scale forest restoration in the Amazon?"Carbon and the Fate of the Amazon," a new study for the Amazon 2030 project bylined by both, sought an approach that considered incentives for deforestation, agricultural suitability, and forest regeneration capacity. "The value of $20 per tonne of CO2 establishes a minimum basis for international trade. The fate of the forest changes, and Brazil wins," said Mr. Assunção.According to the study, this price would generate $320 billion over 30 years. "It becomes more economically viable to abandon cattle ranches and let them regenerate naturally. It’s almost like reconnecting the forest with its past and using the land more productively," said Mr. Assunção."The carbon dynamics in the forest are specific and very different from the energy sector," he added. There is the flow of carbon stocks from the forest, that is, how much CO2 is captured when it is regenerating. This is the case of a cattle ranch that has been abandoned and the forest comes back. As the livestock area increases, some of the stock is consumed and carbon is emitted."Our analysis shows that without a strong mechanism to pay for forest carbon, despite efforts to tackle deforestation, there would still be incentives for deforestation to increase through the expansion of cattle ranching, and the point of no return for the forest could happen in less than two decades," he said. That would mean about 32 billion tonnes of CO2 over the next 30 years.The forest is not homogeneous and sequesters carbon in different ways. The analysis has divided the Amazon into 1,055 areas and looks at those with the greatest potential for carbon sequestration and those with the greatest potential for livestock. Nearly 90% of deforestation has been carried out to make room for cattle ranching.In the European market, the...

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