The Role of the Forest in an Integrated Assessment Model of the Climate and the Economy

This paper develops a model to evaluate then potential role of the global forest as an option to reduce climate change. The approach is to assess the forest as both a source of renewable energy and a potential storage of carbon together with non-carbon energy. The analysis shows that the global forest plays a signicant part in the carbon cycle and should be used together with non-carbon energy strategies. The tropical forest carbon storage proves to be especially important and the emphasis is to enlarge the growing stock, rather than increase the use of forest bioenergy. The positive dynamic eects of increasing bioenergy harvest is too weak to overpower the instant and future benets of increasing the growing forest biomass. Reducing tropical deforestation in the near future proves to be important for reducing climate change.