Global | The forest, a lever for sustainable development

Summary

In developing economies, greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and from pushing forward the agricultural frontier may outweigh those from fossil energy combustion. So how can we reduce them?

Key points

• Key points:
• Around 90% of global carbon emissions into the atmosphere come from the combustion of fossil fuels, while the remaining 10% are caused by land use change, such as pushing forward the boundaries of agriculture and livestock farming, or deforestation. However, in less developed economies, they can approach 50% of the total.
• Forests provide ecosystem services that are essential for life (carbon sequestration, regulation of water cycles, support for biodiversity and soil, or recreation), but are not part of the economic system, are not accounted for and do not generate monetary transactions.
• Internalizing these externalities would mean that the economic profitability of deforestation would have to be compared with the alternative benefit of not deforesting, thus triggering incentives for conservation.
• It's not easy: the global scope of the externality is not helpful in relation to credits for carbon sequestration in forests, with supply and demand at different poles of a world that is becoming less and less multilateral and that is not developing the instruments needed to facilitate international emissions trading.

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