Carbon Payments to Protect Biodiversity | Science
The paper, "Harnessing Carbon Payments to Protect Biodiversity," by University of Queensland Ph.D. student Oscar Venter and colleagues explores potential conservation opportunities engendered by the UN-sponsored REDD (reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation) carbon payments program:
[I]f REDD focuses solely on costeffectively reducing carbon emissions, its benefits for biodiversity are low. ... However, if the same REDD funds were targeted to protect biodiversity, almost four times the number of species would be protected. ...
[S]pecies extinctions are most effectively minimized by protecting biodiversity “hot spots” — areas with high species richness and endemism and relatively little remaining forest — such as the Philippines, Madagascar, and Indonesia. ...[T]hrough careful targeting of REDD funds, allocation solutions can be found that come close to maximizing both objectives simultaneously. We discover that the biodiversity benefits of REDD can be doubled while incurring just a 4 to 8% reduction in carbon benefits, depending on the amount of REDD funds expended.
ABC Australia has a report.
