The Effect of Carbon Credits on Savanna Land Management and Priorities for Biodiversity Conservation

Abstract

Carbon finance offers the potential to change land management and conservation planning priorities. We develop a novel approach to planning for improved land management to conserve biodiversity while utilizing potential revenue from carbon biosequestration. We apply our approach in northern Australia's tropical savanna, a region of global significance for biodiversity and carbon storage, both of which are threatened by current fire and grazing regimes. Our approach aims to identify priority locations for protecting species and vegetation communities by retaining existing vegetation and managing fire and grazing regimes at a minimum cost. We explore the impact of accounting for potential carbon revenue (using a carbon price of US$14 per tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent) on priority areas for conservation and the impact of explicitly protecting carbon stocks in addition to biodiversity. Our results show that improved management can potentially raise approximately US$5 per hectare per year in carbon revenue and prevent the release of 1–2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent over approximately 90 years. This revenue could be used to reduce the costs of improved land management by three quarters or double the number of biodiversity targets achieved and meet carbon storage targets for the same cost. These results are based on generalised cost and carbon data; more comprehensive applications will rely on fine scale, site-specific data and a supportive policy environment. Our research illustrates that the duel objective of conserving biodiversity and reducing the release of greenhouse gases offers important opportunities for cost-effective land management investments.

Shea (<i>Vitellaria paradoxa</i> C. F. Gaertn.) Seedlings Showed Impressive Recovery after Defoliation

“…As stated earlier, this behaviour explains one of the key strategies of tree survival in the savanna environment characterized by bush fires, drought (Ugese et al, 2011a) and inappropriate animal grazing regimes (Douglass et al, 2011). Thus in most cases, biotic and abiotic stresses leave the plant with no foliage or at most very scanty foliage.…”

A new stream and nested catchment framework for Australia

“…In particular, recent enhancements to conservation planning methods to account for catchment connectivity and condition (Linke et al, 2012) depend on the Pfafstetter coding and the broadscale indicators of disturbance provided by the new national framework. Catchment units extracted from this framework also provided planning units for the identification of priority areas for terrestrial biodiversity (Douglass et al, 2011;Klein et al, 2009a, b;Fuller et al, 2010). A trial of the Australian Government's new high conservation value aquatic ecosystems framework across northern Australia (Kennard, 2010) relied on data supplied by the new stream and nested catchment framework and associated environmental attributes.…”

The impacts of fire on birds in Australia's tropical savannas

“…Fitzsimons et al 2012). To a limited but increasing extent, pastoralists are also entering this carbon market, with its chief instrument of fire management and consequential reduction of carbon-equivalent emissions (Douglass et al 2011). Even without consideration of carbon accounting, there is increasing interest among pastoralists in the manner in, and extent to, which fire can influence economic production on pastoral lands (Dyer and Stafford Smith 2003).…”