{"title":"Avoiding global deforestation by taxing land in agricultural production: the implications for global markets","authors":"Eric C. Davis, Maros Ivanic, Brent Sohngen","doi":"10.1186/s13021-025-00291-7","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The projected growth in population and incomes is expected to create pressure to convert forestland into farmland. At the same time, the increasingly negative climate impacts are expected to generate further pressure to enhance the terrestrial carbon sink. Even though these goals are incompatible as reversing the deforestation trend by afforesting cropland would result in negative market impacts such as higher food prices, using the GTAP and GTM models, we find that these impacts would be relatively small if the goal of preserving 144.2 million hectares of forestland that otherwise would be converted to agricultural land by 2033 is achieved through a tax on land use in agricultural production. As to the economic price for doing so, the avoided deforestation would in most regions of the world result in less agricultural output and higher market prices. This is estimated to impact the well-being of global consumers by $119.7 billion, which translates to a global average cost of $13.78 per person in 2033.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":505,"journal":{"name":"Carbon Balance and Management","volume":"20 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.9000,"publicationDate":"2025-03-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://cbmjournal.biomedcentral.com/counter/pdf/10.1186/s13021-025-00291-7","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Carbon Balance and Management","FirstCategoryId":"89","ListUrlMain":"https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13021-025-00291-7","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The projected growth in population and incomes is expected to create pressure to convert forestland into farmland. At the same time, the increasingly negative climate impacts are expected to generate further pressure to enhance the terrestrial carbon sink. Even though these goals are incompatible as reversing the deforestation trend by afforesting cropland would result in negative market impacts such as higher food prices, using the GTAP and GTM models, we find that these impacts would be relatively small if the goal of preserving 144.2 million hectares of forestland that otherwise would be converted to agricultural land by 2033 is achieved through a tax on land use in agricultural production. As to the economic price for doing so, the avoided deforestation would in most regions of the world result in less agricultural output and higher market prices. This is estimated to impact the well-being of global consumers by $119.7 billion, which translates to a global average cost of $13.78 per person in 2033.
期刊介绍:
Carbon Balance and Management is an open access, peer-reviewed online journal that encompasses all aspects of research aimed at developing a comprehensive policy relevant to the understanding of the global carbon cycle.
The global carbon cycle involves important couplings between climate, atmospheric CO2 and the terrestrial and oceanic biospheres. The current transformation of the carbon cycle due to changes in climate and atmospheric composition is widely recognized as potentially dangerous for the biosphere and for the well-being of humankind, and therefore monitoring, understanding and predicting the evolution of the carbon cycle in the context of the whole biosphere (both terrestrial and marine) is a challenge to the scientific community.
This demands interdisciplinary research and new approaches for studying geographical and temporal distributions of carbon pools and fluxes, control and feedback mechanisms of the carbon-climate system, points of intervention and windows of opportunity for managing the carbon-climate-human system.
Carbon Balance and Management is a medium for researchers in the field to convey the results of their research across disciplinary boundaries. Through this dissemination of research, the journal aims to support the work of the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) and to provide governmental and non-governmental organizations with instantaneous access to continually emerging knowledge, including paradigm shifts and consensual views.