CGD Report on Tropical Deforestation: Implications

CGD Report on Tropical Deforestation: Implications

Question: Washington based Centre for Global Development has released a report on the future of tropical deforestation. Discuss its implications for the environment.

- Report holds that within the next 35 years, an area of tropical forest equivalent to India’s size will be destroyed

- Should current trends continue, tropical deforestation will add 169 billion tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere by 2050

- This is equal to running 44,000 coal fired power plants for one year

- Lack of forest conservation policies means 289 mha of tropical forest will be cleared from 2016- 2050 which is one seventh of the tropical forest area of the earth in the year 2000

- Tropical deforestation will increase carbon constituents in the air- one sixth of the remaining carbon can be emitted if rise in earth’s temperature is below 2 degree celsius

- Universally applied carbon price of a certain denomination would avoid emission from tropical deforestation

- Mitigating climate change involves reducing tropical deforestation

- Report projected that emissions amount can be lowered by reducing tropical deforestation

- Close to 89% of low cost emission reductions are in 47 tropical countries

- If tropical countries implement anti deforestation policies as strictly as post 2004 in Brazilian Amazon, 60 GtCO2 of emission would be avoided

Facts and Stats

- CGD has studied 8 million observations of historical forests spanning more than 100 tropical countries as part of this scientific investigation

Spatial projections of future deforestation included the following:

- Topography,

- Accessibility,

- Protected status,

- Potential agricultural revenue,

- Robust observed inverted-U-shaped trajectory of forest cover loss currently observed