Carbon and the Economic Value of the Cofán Ranger Program
How do Cofán rangers help prevent carbon dioxide emissions and, therefore, global warming? And how much is that worth?
Cofán rangers have halted deforestation within the 1 million acres of territory they patrol while nearby forests are being destroyed at a rate of more than 0.5% per year.
This satellite image of Dureno, one of areas under the protection of the Cofán (see the dark green fan-shaped area inside the box) was taken in 2003. Rampant deforestation surrounds Dureno and its progress is frighteningly evident as the lighter green and brown colored tracts that follow the creation of roads in the area.
Without the successful efforts of the Cofán rangers, the natural treasures, environmental services, cultural traditions and the forest itself would have been completely lost.
The Value of the Cofán Ranger Program
There is increasing global awareness that maintaining healthy forests in the world's greatest biodiversity hotspots clearly has a real monetary value to society, but putting an exact number on that value can be a real challenge.
If we were to add it up, the real value of the Cofán Ranger Program would be the sum of the economic values resulting from their contribution to:
The calculation of each one of these values, however, harbors its own international, decades-long, scientific, political and economic debate.
While we won't jump headfirst into the details of all of these values here, we will provide a basic idea of the value involved by taking a look at the final category of prevented CO2 emissions:
Prevented CO2 emissions by reducing deforestation
Carbon is an important topic these days as the planet heats up, glaciers and polar regions melt, weather patterns are changing, and concerned humans try to figure out how to return the CO2 and other greenhouse gases we've been pumping into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution back into the earth.
This new goal has resulted in a commercial market value for CO2, usually expressed as $/metric ton of CO2 equivalent. The basic idea of market-based trading systems is that an entity, be it a business, organization, government or the like, starts with a certain number of credits based on its historic emissions, and if an entity wants to emit more CO2, it buys credits from others. If it doesn't emit CO2, it can sell its credits to others. Emissions trading markets already exist at the level of large-scale businesses and utilities and voluntary carbon markets exist at the level of individuals and smaller environmentally-conscious businesses (Learn More about emissions trading).
Scientists calculate that almost 13% of the CO2 emissions on the planet come from deforestation and forest degradation (see below for details). That is a lot of carbon, and it places those who manage huge tracts of forest, like the Cofán, in an interesting position.
The Cofán Territories include over one million acres of intact forests in Northern Ecuador
Realizing its potential role in the carbon game, the Cofan Survival Fund has partnered with multiple organizations to understand just how big a player it is and how it all works. After over a year of research, the Cofán now have an answer to the question: "What is the economic value of the carbon that the Cofán keep in the forests every year by preventing deforestation?"
Arriving at this number required serious science involving specialized scientific and economic teams for satellite image analysis, field measurements, literature reviews, crunching numbers, and arriving to a consensus about the calculations made and their resulting estimates.
The institutions involved in funding and undertaking the Cofán carbon work to date include:
Funds invested in this important work total over $450,000 to date.
Here's the Cofán carbon story, simplified and bulleted to make it easy to follow along:
After all these calculations, are you interested in offsetting your own personal carbon emissions from traveling by car and plane, using air conditioning and heating, and other everyday activities?
Copyright 2013 - Cofan Survival Fund 501(c)3 nonprofit in the USA
Fundación para la Sobreviviencia del Pueblo Cofán in Ecuador