Establishing Credible Baselines for Quantifying Avoided Carbon Emissions from Reduced Deforestation and Forest Degradation

Global climate policy initiatives are now being proposed to compensate tropical forest nations for reducing the emissions of carbon from deforestation and forest degradation. This effort has the potential to include developing countries more actively in international greenhouse gas mitigation and to address a substantial share of the world’s emissions which come from deforestation. A baseline is an essential precursor to a viable and robust international compensation scheme for reduced emissions from degradation and deforestation (REDD). Baselines provide a benchmark against which emissions reduction can be calculated.

Author(s): Lydia P. Olander, Brian C. Murray, Marc Steininger, and Holly Gibbs

Published: December 2006

download: working paper (.pdf) >

Global climate policy initiatives are now being proposed to compensate tropical forest nations for reducing the emissions of carbon from deforestation and forest degradation. This effort has the potential to include developing countries more actively in international greenhouse gas mitigation and to address a substantial share of the world’s emissions which come from deforestation. A baseline is an essential precursor to a viable and robust international compensation scheme for reduced emissions from degradation and deforestation (REDD). Baselines provide a benchmark against which emissions reduction can be calculated.

To incorporate REDD in international climate policy, we propose that the baseline be developed at the national level and based on the emissions from deforestation and degradation activity during a predetermined historical reference period. Baselines can be set for various time intervals, although for REDD a minimum amount of time (perhaps 5- 10 years) will be essential for taking into account variations in deforestation-related emissions.

For a REDD policy, using a national level reference historical period increases transparency, clarity, and feasibility of measurement. The historical period selected for reference periods will have profound impacts for incentives to reduce deforestation and degradation depending on each country’s deforestation rate during that period relative to the potential for future deforestation. Thus, selection of a reference period will require discussion among participating nations. While some flexibility may be necessary, any reference period applied to a REDD policy should focus primarily on providing correct incentives for real emission reductions.

The technologies and tools exist to develop credible measurement of deforestation during a historical reference period. However, this paper does not discuss the crucial next step of determining carbon emissions from the deforestation to determine baseline emissions (Gibbs 2006). From a practical standpoint, the existing data and institutional capabilities for processing national deforestation measurements are not yet sufficient. There are still several critical challenges, but initiatives are underway to develop a first round of reference scenarios. There are two primary methods being used for measurement of deforestation: (1) analysis of remote sensing data from a comprehensive census of the covered area (aka,“wall-to-wall”) and (2) statistical sampling of remote sensing data to develop data points for inferring rates within the area of interest. To date the wall-to-wall efforts have been more focused on national level assessments and have data that are better suited for determining national level emissions for a reference period. FAO survey data are likely not of sufficient accuracy for determining national deforestation for setting baselines.

Key technical issues that need focused effort are: (1) determining a credible policy definition and means for measuring forest degradation, and (2) determining acceptable techniques for linking measurements of deforestation and degradation to emission of greenhouse gases. Including degradation in any reference period will help expand incentives to reduce forest losses and greenhouse gas emissions, but raises several technical challenges. Linking measurement of forest loss to measurements of carbon emissions is crucial since emissions are what is being valued and traded, not land area.

As countries work to develop their deforestation/degradation emissions baseline, several factors should be considered: 1) international or bilateral grants may be critical in helping countries increase capacity for the necessary measurements; 2) continued efforts to build forest inventory and carbon stock data are necessary to determine emissions from measurements of deforestation and degradation; and 3) the Landsat program should be accelerated and fully supported to replace the damaged satellite and increase capacity for data analysis.

At the international level, there must be continued calls for high-resolution imagery, development and expansion of radar technology and data sharing. Any REDD baseline policy should provide minimum baseline requirements to create a credible system, allow flexibility, and reward countries for reducing uncertainties in the estimates. Such an approach will allow a timely start for REDD incentives, maintain credibility, and allow capacity building and improvements over time.