The Economics
Financing Global Forests Back to top
The Eliasch Review aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of international financing to reduce forest loss and its associated impacts on climate change.
The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change supports the potential role of reducing deforestation as a cost-effective tool against climate change. The cost of a 50% reduction would be around $5-10 billion per year.
Using results from a range of studies, the Union of Concerned Scientists has shown that REDD may be more costly than Stern's estimates: $20 billion per year to reduce deforestation by half.
Carbon dioxide abatement cost curve analyses by McKinsey & Co confirms avoided deforestation to be cost-effective. The forestry sector in general has the largest abatement potential of all sectors considered.
Regional analyses of the costs and benefits of reducing deforestation Back to top
The Woods Hole Research Centre has conducted spatial analyses of the opportunity costs of halting deforestation in Amazonia and the Congo Basin.
The Alternatives to Slash and Burn (ASB) programme researched the costs and benefits of avoiding deforestation in Peru, Indonesia, the Philippines and Cameroon and found that at most sites deforesting activities generated less than $5 per tonne of CO2.
In “The Amazon Frontier Advance: from boom to bust” the Imazon Institute shows how deforestation leads to environmental, economic and social collapse.
A greener economy Back to top
UNEP's initiative on a Global Green New Deal, inspired by President Roosevelt's New Deal in the aftermath of the Great Depression, is to inspire and enable governments to begin the shift towards a global economy driven by massive job creation from the growth of resource- and energy-efficient building and construction, widespread use of modern public transport in mega cities, the scaling up of solar, wind, wave, thermal, and bio energy in the total energy mix, sustainable chemicals and waste management as a highly lucrative sector, and sustainable agriculture that reflects the latest thinking in ecosystem management and biodiversity and water conservation.
