Protecting Life and Lung: Protected Areas affect fine particulate matter and respiratory hospitalizations in the Brazilian Amazon Biome.

There is growing recognition of the connection between ecosystem conservation and human health. For example, protection of tropical forests can affect the spread of infectious diseases, water quality, and dietary diversity, while forest loss can have important consequences for respiratory health due to the use of fire for converting land to alternative uses in many countries. Studies demonstrating links between ecosystems and health often conclude with recommendations to expand policies that protect natural ecosystems. However, there is little empirical evidence on the extent to which conservation policies actually deliver health benefits when they are implemented in real contexts. We estimate the effects of protected areas (PAs), the dominant type of conservation policy, on hospitalizations for respiratory illness in the Brazilian Amazon biome. We find that doubling upwind PAs reduces PM2.5 by 10% and respiratory hospitalizations by 7% in the months of most active biomass burning. Brazil has an extensive network of PAs, but investments in management and enforcement have declined in recent years. Forest fires have increased dramatically over the same period. We estimate that the value of the health benefits exceed current average expenditures on PA management for the 1/3 of PAs with the largest local populations, although not for PAs in more remote locations. Our findings highlight how quantifying the contributions to the wellbeing of local populations can support conservation objectives, even if global environmental benefits are not a high priority for decision makers.

Overstated carbon emission reductions from voluntary REDD+ projects in the Brazilian Amazon.

Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) has gained international attention over the past decade, as manifested in both United Nations policy discussions and hundreds of voluntary projects launched to earn carbon-offset credits. There are ongoing discussions about whether and how projects should be integrated into national climate change mitigation efforts under the Paris Agreement. One consideration is whether these projects have generated additional impacts over and above national policies and other measures. To help inform these discussions, we compare the crediting baselines established ex-ante by voluntary REDD+ projects in the Brazilian Amazon to counterfactuals constructed ex-post based on the quasi-experimental synthetic control method. We find that the crediting baselines assume consistently higher deforestation than counterfactual forest loss in synthetic control sites. This gap is partially due to decreased deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon during the early implementation phase of the REDD+ projects considered here. This suggests that forest carbon finance must strike a balance between controlling conservation investment risk and ensuring the environmental integrity of carbon emission offsets. Relatedly, our results point to the need to better align project- and national-level carbon accounting.

Diversification of forestry portfolios for climate change and market risk mitigation.

Investments in forestry are long-term and thus subject to numerous sources of risk. In addition to the volatility from markets, forestry investments are directly exposed to future impacts from climate change. We examined how diversification of forest management regimes can mitigate the expected risks associated with forestry activities in New Zealand based on an application of Modern Portfolio Theory. Uncertainties in the responses of Pinus radiata (D. Don) productivity to climate change, from 2050 to 2090, were simulated with 3-PG, a process-based forest growth model, based on future climate scenarios and Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs). Future timber market scenarios were based on RCP-specific projections from the Global Timber Model and historical log grade prices. Outputs from 3-PG and the market scenarios were combined to compute annualized forestry returns for four P. radiata regimes for 2050-2090. This information was then used to construct optimal forestry portfolios that minimize investment risk for a given target return under different RCPs, forest productivity and market scenarios. While current P. radiata regimes in New Zealand are largely homogenous, our results suggest that regime diversification can mitigate future risks imposed by climate change and market uncertainty. Nevertheless, optimal portfolio compositions varied substantially across our range of scenarios and portfolio objectives. The application of this framework can help forest managers to better account for future risks in their management decisions.

Transformation of Brazil's biomes: The dynamics and fate of agriculture and pasture expansion into native vegetation.

Land use and cover change (LUCC) in Brazil encompass a complex interplay of diverse factors across different biomes. Understanding these dynamics is crucial for informed decision-making and sustainable land management. In this study, we comprehensively analyzed LUCC patterns and drivers using 30 m resolution MapBiomas Collection 6.0 data (1985-2020). By mapping deforestation of primary and secondary natural vegetation, natural vegetation regeneration, and transitions between pasture, soybean, agriculture, and irrigation, we shed light on the intricate nature of LUCC in Brazil. Our findings highlight significant and increasing trends of deforestation in primary vegetation in the country. Simultaneously, the Atlantic Forest, Caatinga, Pampa, and other regions of the Cerrado have experienced intensification processes. Notably, the pasture area in Brazil reached its peak in 2006 and has since witnessed a gradual replacement by soybean and other crops. While pasture-driven deforestation persists in most biomes, the net pasture area has only increased in the Amazon and Pantanal, decreasing in other biomes due to the conversion of pasturelands to intensive cropping in other regions. Our analysis further reveals that primary and secondary vegetation deforestation accounts for a substantial portion of overall forest loss, with 72 % and 17 %, respectively. Of the cleared areas, 48 % were in pasture, 9 % in soybean cultivation, and 16 % in other agricultural uses in 2020. Additionally, we observed a lower rate of deforestation in the Atlantic Forest, a biome that has been significantly influenced by anthropogenic activities since 1986. This holistic quantification of LUCC dynamics provides a solid foundation for understanding the impacts of these changes on local to continental-scale land-atmosphere interactions. By unraveling the complex nature of LUCC in Brazil, this study aims to contribute to the development of effective strategies for sustainable land management and decision-making processes.

Action needed to make carbon offsets from forest conservation work for climate change mitigation.

Carbon offsets from voluntary avoided-deforestation projects are generated on the basis of performance in relation to ex ante deforestation baselines. We examined the effects of 26 such project sites in six countries on three continents using synthetic control methods for causal inference. We found that most projects have not significantly reduced deforestation. For projects that did, reductions were substantially lower than claimed. This reflects differences between the project ex ante baselines and ex post counterfactuals according to observed deforestation in control areas. Methodologies used to construct deforestation baselines for carbon offset interventions need urgent revisions to correctly attribute reduced deforestation to the projects, thus maintaining both incentives for forest conservation and the integrity of global carbon accounting.

Rapid tree carbon stock recovery in managed Amazonian forests.

While around 20% of the Amazonian forest has been cleared for pastures and agriculture, one fourth of the remaining forest is dedicated to wood production. Most of these production forests have been or will be selectively harvested for commercial timber, but recent studies show that even soon after logging, harvested stands retain much of their tree-biomass carbon and biodiversity. Comparing species richness of various animal taxa among logged and unlogged forests across the tropics, Burivalova et al. found that despite some variability among taxa, biodiversity loss was generally explained by logging intensity (the number of trees extracted). Here, we use a network of 79 permanent sample plots (376 ha total) located at 10 sites across the Amazon Basin to assess the main drivers of time-to-recovery of post-logging tree carbon (Table S1). Recovery time is of direct relevance to policies governing management practices (i.e., allowable volumes cut and cutting cycle lengths), and indirectly to forest-based climate change mitigation interventions.