Contribution of native forests to climate change mitigation – a common approach to carbon accounting that aligns results from environmental-economic accounting with rules for emissions reduction.

Abstract

Comprehensive carbon stock and flow accounts integrated with economic information, under an environmental-economic accounting framework, provide a common approach for an information system to improve policymaking for climate change mitigation, sustainable development and forest management. The information system includes environmental and economic data, linkages between land use activities, their co-benefits, inputs to the economy and benefits for human well-being. Forest management was used as an example of application of the accounting framework because it has the greatest climate change mitigation potential of all land use activities. A case study developing carbon accounts for a forest region in south-eastern Australia demonstrated the mitigation benefits of long-term carbon storage and sequestration in native forests. Using environmental-economic accounts helped identify policy and market instruments required to value ecosystem services of carbon storage and sequestration by applying a potential market price for carbon. We identified benefits of native forest protection as a carbon abatement activity, and compared this value to that of current forest management for timber harvesting that reduces carbon stocks. Both land uses provided similar economic contributions (approximately $12 million yr-1, using a minimal carbon price), but native forest protection has additional co-benefits of improving water yield, tourism, recreation and biodiversity conservation. The accounts determine values of land use activities in physical and monetary metrics, and link these to beneficiaries of ecosystem services, so that maximum benefits for public good are identified. Quantifying ecosystem services of carbon storage (protecting stocks) and sequestration (increasing flows) in a native forest region, by applying a potential market price, broadens the policy options for mitigation activities. Adopting a comprehensive accounting system, and changing some of the definitions and rules under the Paris Agreement and national emissions reduction policies and markets, would allow the mitigation benefit of protecting native forests to be realised.