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Cost-effectiveness of natural forest regeneration and plantations for climate mitigation

Published Article

Global

Publication date: July 24, 2024

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Mapping costs for natural regeneration and plantations shows that choosing the cheaper method in each location greatly increases low‑cost reforestation potential. This approach yields far more affordable GHG abatement than using either method alone and exceeds recent IPCC estimates by a wide margin.

Subject Tags

  • Agriculture
  • Climate mitigation
  • Forest

Abstract

Mitigating climate change cost-effectively requires identifying least-cost-per-ton GHG abatement methods. Here, we estimate and map GHG abatement cost (US$ per tCO2) for two common reforestation methods: natural regeneration and plantations. We do so by producing and integrating new maps of implementation costs and opportunity costs of reforestation, likely plantation genus and carbon accumulation by means of natural regeneration and plantations, accounting for storage in harvested wood products. We find natural regeneration (46%) and plantations (54%) would each have lower abatement cost across about half the area considered suitable for reforestation of 138 low- and middle-income countries. Using the more cost-effective method at each location, the 30 year, time-discounted abatement potential of reforestation below US$50 per tCO2 is 31.4 GtCO2 (24.2–34.3 GtCO2 below US$20–100 per tCO2)—44% more than natural regeneration alone or 39% more than plantations alone. We find that reforestation offers 10.3 (2.8) times more abatement below US$20 per tCO2 (US$50 per tCO2) than the most recent IPCC estimate.

Citation

Busch, J., Bukoski, J.J., Cook-Patton, S.C., Griscom, B., Kaczan, D., Potts, M.D., Yi, Y. and Vincent, J.R., 2024. Cost-effectiveness of natural forest regeneration and plantations for climate mitigation. Nature Climate Change, 14(9), pp.996-1002. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-024-02068-1

TNC Authors