Carbon payments in the Guanzhong–Tianshui region to control land degradation

Abstract

Carbon trading and carbon offset markets are potential policy options for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. A price on carbon is expected to generate demand for carbon offsets. In a market-based framework, the carbon price should be high enough to compensate for opportunity costs. We studied a highly-modified agricultural system in the Guanzhong–Tianshui economic region of China that is typical of many temperate agricultural zones in western China. We quantified the economic returns from agriculture and from carbon plantings (both monoculture and ecological plantings) under five carbon-price scenarios. The mean carbon sequestration is 34 Mg·hm⁻²·a⁻¹, and the average annual payment increased to 1146 CNY·hm⁻² at a medium carbon price of 50 CNY·Mg⁻¹ CO₂^−e. Thus, areas of high priority for conservation and restoration may be restored relatively cheaply in the presence of a carbon market. Overall, however, less carbon is sequestered by ecological plantings (i.e., mixed native trees and shrubs) compared to agriculture.

Keywords

carbon-price / carbon sequestration / economic returns / Guanzhong–Tianshui economic region / net present value

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41371020), Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (GK201502010), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation on the 58th Group (2015M582706), Postdoctoral Scientific Research Project Foundation of Shaanxi Province in 2015, and China 111 Project (B12007).

Compliance with ethics guidelines

Zixiang Zhou and Yufeng Zou declare that they have no conflict of interest or financial conflicts to disclose.

This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

The Author(s) 2017. Published by Higher Education Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)