The economic costs of planting, preserving, and managing the world’s forests to mitigate climate change

Austin et al. 2020

It is now well established that forest protection, restoration, management and creation play a crucial role in mitigating climate change. This paper estimates the costs of such actions, and the amount of forest-based climate change mitigation that could be funded by different carbon prices. They find that a carbon price of $281 per tonne CO2 would be needed by 2055 for forests to contribute 10% of mitigation potential needed to limit global warming for 1.5°C.

It is important to remember that forests only comprise one component of nature’s role in climate change mitigation. Nature-based solutions in peatlands, mangroves, seagrass meadows, flooded grasslands, farmland and other ecosystems also make vital contributions to carbon sequestration.

Read the paper here.