A globally relevant data-driven assessment of carbon leakage from forestry

Bibliographic Data

ID15550432
AuthorsAdam Daigneault (0000-0002-8287-8727, University of Maine, corresponding author), Brent Sohngen (0000-0002-9094-160X, The Ohio State University), Ethan P Belair (0000-0003-4467-3736, The Nature Conservancy), Peter W Ellis (0000-0001-7933-8298, The Nature Conservancy)
Year2025
Volume20
Issue11
Pages114022-114022
Publication date2025-09-29
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEnvironmental Research Letters (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1748-9326 • E-ISSN: 1748-9326
PublisherIOP Publishing (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1088/1748-9326/ae0ce2
OpenAlexW4414599974
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited8

Climate smart forestry (CSF) practices are widely recognized as efficient natural climate solutions. However, leakage accounting for these practices often relies on limited analysis and ad hoc reasoning, leading to integrity concerns and underinvestment in CSF. This study proposes a data-intensive, dynamic economic-ecological modeling approach to estimating regional CSF leakage, with global applicability. Results show how leakage varies by CSF activity, location, forest type, timeframe, and implementation rate. Critically, we show that widely cited harvest leakage estimates ignore complex forest dynamics and are a poor proxy for the metric most applicable to CSF implementation: carbon leakage. While harvest leakage is nearly always positive, our results demonstrate that some project designs can result in beneficial carbon spillovers, or negative carbon leakage. These results improve the evidence base for robust leakage quantification in CSF-based projects, enabling more accurate accounting and thereby ensuring credible climate benefits. These results are relevant in a carbon markets context, where robust leakage accounting would help safeguard the credibility of ecosystem service payments, but are also applicable to traditional, non-carbon markets conservation projects seeking to quantify carbon mitigation impacts

Carbon accounting · Carbon leakage · Carbon market · Climate change · Credibility · Leakage (economics · Safeguard · Uncertainty analysis · Fire effects on ecosystems · Forest Biomass Utilization and Management · Forest Management and Policy

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