Estimating Tropical Forest Carbon at Risk of Emission from Deforestation Globally. Applying the Terrestrial Carbon Group Reference Emission Level Approach

One of the key unresolved issues in the United Nations negotiations on the inclusion of terrestrial carbon in the climate change solution is how to set a so-called “reference emission level”. The Terrestrial Carbon Group supports the conceptual approach that reference emission levels should reflect business as usual into the future. This Policy Brief explains why we support this approach and outlines our methodology for estimating emissions (and setting reference emission levels) in line with it. We believe this methodology is replicable and scalable across nations, sub-national entities, and projects. For illustrative purposes, we have applied it in a standardized way across 73 non-Annex I tropical forest nations and this Policy Brief presents the results of doing so. We include estimates of (i) business as usual emissions from deforestation of the tropical forest at the regional and global level, and (ii) the impact, in terms of incentivised avoided emissions, of potential payments for carbon.