Jonah Busch

• Ph.D. Economics and Environmental Science
• Research Associate at Center for Global Development

Mitigating climate change cost-effectively requires identifying least-cost-per-ton GHG abatement methods. Here, we estimate and map GHG abatement cost (US$ per tCO2) for two common reforestation methods: natural regeneration and plantations. We do so by producing and integrating new maps of implementation costs and opportunity costs of reforestatio...

Land‐based climate mitigation measures have gained significant attention and importance in public and private sector climate policies. Building on previous studies, we refine and update the mitigation potentials for 20 land‐based measures in >200 countries and five regions, comparing “bottom‐up” sectoral estimates with integrated assessment models...

Ecological fiscal transfers (EFT) transfer public revenue between governments within a country based on ecological indicators. EFT can compensate subnational governments for the costs of conserving ecosystems and in principle can incentivize greater ecological conservation. We review established EFT in Brazil, Portugal, France, China and India, and...

Protected areas have been the cornerstone for conservation globally [1], but gaps still exist in preserving biodiversity [2]. Meanwhile, areas designated as protected have overlaps between designations and might vary in their management [3, 4]. All three phenomena—coverage gaps, overlapping designations, and disparities in management—are present in...

Better land stewardship is needed to achieve the Paris Agreement's temperature goal, particularly in the tropics, where greenhouse gas emissions from the destruction of ecosystems are largest, and where the potential for additional land carbon storage is greatest. As countries enhance their nationally determined contributions (NDCs) to the Paris Ag...

Achieving the 1.5–2.0 °C temperature targets of the Paris climate agreement requires not only reducing emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) but also increasing removals of GHGs from the atmosphere [1,2]. Reforestation is a potentially large-scale method for removing CO2 and storing it in the biomass and soils of ecosystems [3,4,5,6,7,8], yet its co...

Reducing tropical deforestation is potentially a large-scale and low-cost strategy for mitigating climate change. Yet previous efforts to project the cost-effectiveness of policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from future deforestation across the tropics were hampered by crude available data on historical forest loss. Here we use recently ava...

This article presents a meta-analysis of what drives deforestation and what stops it, based on a comprehensive database of 121 spatially explicit econometric studies of deforestation published in peer-reviewed academic journals from 1996 to 2013. We found that forests are more likely to be cleared in locations where the economic returns to agricult...

This technical background note briefly describes how we generated each statistic that appears in Chapter 5 of Why Forests? Why Now? The Science, Economics, and Politics of Tropical Deforestation and Climate Change (Frances Seymour and Jonah Busch, Brookings Institution Press, 2016).

This paper presents an overview of the state of measurement and monitoring capabilities for forests in the context of REDD+ needs, with a focus on what is currently possible, where improvements are needed, and what capabilities will be advanced in the near-term with new technologies already under development. We summarize the role of remote sensing...

Uncertainty in emissions and emission changes estimates constitutes an unresolved issue for a future international climate agreement. Uncertainty can be addressed ‘upstream’ through improvements in the technologies or techniques used to measure, report, and verify (MRV) emission reductions, or ‘downstream’ through the application of discount factor...

Significance Our paper is significant in a number of respects. First, we expand the literature on quasi-experimental evaluation of the causal impact of conservation measures to include agricultural concessions. Second, our report is rare in that we use panel data and techniques in a literature on spatially explicit land-use change econometrics that...

This paper presents an overview of the state of measurement and monitoring capabilities for forests in the context of REDD needs, with a focus on what is currently possible, where improvements are needed, and what capabilities will be advanced in the near-term with new technologies already under development. We summarize the role of remote sensing...

China has recently reformed its system of collective forest tenure to allow commercial logging, increased collection of firewood and non-timber forest products by outside enterprises, unmanaged tourism, and certain types of industrial development to occur in collective forests where these activities were previously restrained. The reform would also...

We have constructed a comprehensive database of 117 spatially explicit econometric studies of deforestation published in peer-reviewed academic journals from 1996-2013. We present a meta-analysis of what drives deforestation and what stops it, based on the signs and significance of 5909 coefficients in 554 multivariate analyses. We find that forest...

An international mechanism to reduce emissions from deforestation using carbon payments (REDD+) can be leveraged to make payments for forests’ biodiversity as well. Paradoxically, under conditions consistent with emerging REDD+ programs, money spent on a mixture of carbon payments and biodiversity payments has the potential to incentivize the provi...

Biodiversity loss and climate change both result from tropical deforestation, yet strategies to address biodiversity loss have focused primarily on protected areas while strategies to address climate change have focused primarily on carbon payments. Conservation planning research has focused largely on where to prioritize protected areas to achieve...

By promoting the conservation and restoration of natural ecosystems, policymakers have a unique opportunity to mitigate climate change while providing social and environmental benefits. Here we highlight how nature-based mitigation strategies for multiple benefits can be supported by three key areas of scientific research, drawing upon examples of...

China's achievements in giant panda conservation ([ 1 ][1]) are now jeopardized by recent tenure reform of its 167 million hectares of collective forest ([ 2 ][2]). The reform enables individual farming households to transfer or lease operation rights to outside enterprises. By allowing commercial

Offsets lower the cost of cap-and-trade programs but must be considered imperfect if they cannot exclude “non-additional” emissions reductions or sequestration gains that would have occurred in their absence. Non-additionality can be addressed by requiring project-level additionality tests, by adjusting the mandatory emissions cap, or by imposing a...

We examined the cost of conserving species as climate changes. We used a Maxent species distribution model to predict the ranges from 2000 to 2080 of 74 plant species endemic to the forests of Madagascar under 3 climate scenarios. We set a conservation target of achieving 10,000 ha of forest cover for each species and calculated the cost of achievi...

We estimate and map the impacts that alternative national and subnational economic incentive structures for reducing emissions from deforestation (REDD+) in Indonesia would have had on greenhouse gas emissions and national and local revenue if they had been in place from 2000 to 2005. The impact of carbon payments on deforestation is calibrated eco...

Bolivia has significant potential to abate climate change by reducing deforestation. This opportunity presents economic and environmental tradeoffs. While these tradeoffs have been hotly debated, they have as yet been the subject of little quantitative analysis. We introduce the OSIRIS-Bolivia model to provide a quantitative basis for decision-maki...

Bolivia tiene un gran potencial para mitigar el cambio climático a través de la reducción de la deforestación. Mientras que las posibles complicaciones han sido intensamente debatidas, se ha realizado poco análisis cuantitativo al respecto. Introducimos el modelo OSIRIS-Bolivia con el fin de crear una base cuantitativa para la toma de decisiones. O...

The extent to which an international mechanism to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD+) can also provide biodiversity co-benefits will depend on whether the mechanism results in the retention of forest in countries harboring substantial biodiversity. Countries’ decisions whether or not to participate in REDD+ will be influence...

This paper develops an analytical model of a REDD+ mechanism with an international payment tier and a national payment tier, and calibrate land users' opportunity cost curves based on data from Sumatra. We compare the avoided deforestation and cost-eciency of government purchases across the two types of contracts fixed price and opportunity cost, a...

4èmes Journées de recherches en sciences sociales à AgroCampus-Ouest (Rennes), les 9 et 10 décembre 2010 1 Résumé La Réduction des Emissions liées à la Déforestation et la Dégradation des forêts est un nouveau mécanisme pour l'atténuation du changement climatique négocié à la CCNUCC.

Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) can be an effective and efficient means of mitigating climate change. However, the perceived equity in the distribution of financial incentives for REDD could also emerge as a critical issue in international negotiations. The design of reference levels, which provide the benchmark...

Fecal contamination of coastal waters has led local public health agencies to issue tens of thousands of beach advisories annually and to advise against ocean swimming and surfing for 72 hours following a rain. The responsiveness of recreationists to beach advisories and the “72 hour rule” is estimated by merging four years of multi-daily surfer an...

The climate benefit and economic cost of an international mechanism for reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) will depend on the design of reference levels for crediting emission reductions. We compare the impacts of six proposed reference level designs on emission reduction levels and on cost per emission reduction using a s...

This article was submitted without an abstract, please refer to the full-text PDF file.

This article was submitted without an abstract, please refer to the full-text PDF file.

This article was submitted without an abstract, please refer to the full-text PDF file.

This article was submitted without an abstract, please refer to the full-text PDF file.

Although an estimated US$6 billion is invested annually in our planet's biological diversity, little research has been conducted on which conservation treatments work best or provide best value for money. Where controlled experiments are not possible, econometric techniques can be used to determine the effectiveness of conservation treatments. We u...

Nearly two hundred transboundary protected areas comprise a portion of the global conservation landscape the size of India, with further expansion anticipated. Proponents claim that transboundary protected areas outperform isolated protected areas in achieving conservation objectives, while regional case studies have led critics to challenge this c...

Although an estimated US$6 billion is invested annually in our planet’s biological diversity, little research has been conducted on which conservation treatments work best or provide best value for money. Conserving biodiversity efficiently depends on identifying conservation treatments which provide greatest return on investment. Where contro...

Mitigating climate change by reducing deforestation should involve incentives for countries that currently have high forest cover and low deforestation rates.

We estimate the impacts that alternative national and sub-national economic incentive structures for reducing emissions from deforestation (REDD+) in Indonesia would have had on greenhouse gas emissions and national and local revenue if they had been in place from 2000-2005. The impact of carbon payments on deforestation is calibrated econometrical...

Climate change negotiations in Copenhagen produced the clearest picture yet of the international mechanism that may emerge to pay for reduced, prevented and reversed emissions from deforestation (REDD+). Such a mechanism would put in place the monitoring, accounting, finance, and governance infrastructure for payments for forests' climate change mi...