Background
In this part of the project, we investigate the cost-effectiveness of alternative peatland management regimes under climate change, making use of the identified best management practices and assessments of their influence on carbon storage and greenhouse gas emissions under Can-Peat activities. Besides the cost and effectiveness of these best management practices, also the social and economic benefits of carbon storage and reduced levels of greenhouse gas emissions will be estimated, using state-of-the-art market and non-market valuation methods, as well as potential co-benefits of the additional ecosystem services provided by peatlands, such as food and water security and biodiversity conservation. Often, the financial revenues of economic exploitation of peatlands are relatively easy to estimate, but not the social and economic benefits of their conservation. The latter are not only less tangible and hence more difficult to quantify, they usually also manifest themselves over longer temporal and spatial scales. As a consequence, the benefits of conservation are easily overlooked or ignored compared to the instantaneous financial benefits of conversion and exploitation in cost-benefit analysis (CBA).
Activity Outline
- Develop practical guidelines on how to account for the market and non-market values of the various peatland ecosystem services across Canada for use in CBA to support peatland conservation and restoration policy and decision-making
- Integrate peatland management into ongoing research at the University of Waterloo to develop a computable general equilibrium model of the Canadian economy including the greenhouse gas emission levels of different economic activities across the country
- Review existing market-based instruments to explore the potential for new policy instruments