BIOECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF CARBON FOREST SEQUESTRATION AND OF THE ECOLOGICAL DEBT: AN APPLICATION TO THE CASE OF RIO GRANDE DO SUL

Though heavily criticized, the Kyoto Protocol has stood out as the key political tool in addressing climate change. However, one of the few instruments that allows industrialized and developing countries to cooperate towards mitigation of GHGs is CDM (Clean Development Mechanism). The underlying assumption of forestry CDM is that forest plantations (afforestation/ reforestation) might help remove carbon dioxide (the most representative GHG) emissions and compensate for the loss of natural forests. Therefore, this study focuses on this alleged trade-off. A bioeconomic analysis, which abstracts out money variables, is applied to assess carbon forest sequestration in Rio Grande do Sul. The state’s forest area is split up into natural and planted forests only. On one hand, this does not allow to check out for deforestation; on the other hand, such a phenomenon is not remarkable in Rio Grande do Sul. The land use is taken into account by a function that works as the emission removal demand. On the other hand, the emission supply function depends on the economic growth rates. The results show that, eventually, the sustainability of economic growth hinges on a region’s or country’s ecological situation – namely, equilibrium, credit or debt. The economic and environmental advantages of each mitigation strategy – CDM and natural forest conservation – are crosschecked. A nearly 40-year-long overshoot rate is, after all, estimated for the forest sector in Rio Grande do Sul. The estimates suggest that CDM might help to relieve environmental stress only where ecological credit is reported. Where ecological debt is already on, CDM was found unable to compensate for conservation disregard.