Comment les marchés du carbone sous- estiment-ils systématiquement les bénéfices pour le climat des forêts tropicales

This report by the World Resources Institute argues that current carbon credit markets systematically undervalue tropical forests by focusing exclusively on carbon sequestration and ignoring critical non-carbon biophysical effects that contribute to global, regional, and local climate cooling.

• Tropical forests influence the climate through four primary non-carbon biophysical processes: albedo (solar energy reflection), evapotranspiration (cooling via moisture release), surface roughness (wind turbulence that lifts heat and moisture), and aerosols (particles like pollen that affect cloud color and ozone concentrations).
• Deforestation of tropical forests has severe climate impacts across three scales: globally, it contributes 50% more to planetary warming than carbon alone; regionally, it can reduce rainfall in downwind areas (e.g., Amazonian deforestation affecting Bolivia, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Argentina); and locally, it can increase peak daily temperatures by up to 7.6°C.
• Current carbon credit systems systematically underestimate the climate benefits of tropical forests because they ignore biophysical cooling. If the estimated cost-effective mitigation potential of reducing tropical deforestation (2.8 gigatonnes of CO2 per year between 2030 and 2050) were adjusted for a 50% planetary cooling bonus, it would provide an additional annual mitigation of 1.4 to 1.8 gigatonnes of CO2, roughly equivalent to Japan's total anthropogenic emissions in 2019.
• The report identifies a concept of "positive biophysical leakage," where protecting tropical forests enhances the resilience of the broader landscape by maintaining cooler and more humid environments. This reduces the risk of CO2 emissions from fires and droughts in adjacent non-protected areas and helps prevent ecosystems from reaching tipping points, such as the conversion of the Amazon forest into a savanna ecosystem.
• Conservative standards and high deduction thresholds used to manage environmental integrity risks (such as non-additionality, uncertainty, ephemerality, and leakage) can be punitively high for tropical forest credits. This may exclude High Forest Low Deforestation (HFLD) jurisdictions and indigenous territories from carbon markets, limiting funding and increasing thermal stress for local communities.
• To better value tropical forests, the authors suggest four improvements: balancing risk thresholds to avoid excluding natural solutions, treating biophysical effects as additional priced attributes, accounting for positive biophysical leakage, and working toward quantifying these benefits as CO2 equivalents.

APA

Nugent, N., & Seymour, F. (n.d.). Comment les marchés du carbone sous- estiment-ils systématiquement les bénéfices pour le climat des forêts tropicales. World Resources Institute. https://files.wri.org/d8/s3fs-public/2023-10/how-carbon-markets-systematically-undervalue-tropical-forests-climate-benefits-french.pdf

Chicago

Nugent, Nick, and Frances Seymour. Comment les marchés du carbone sous- estiment-ils systématiquement les bénéfices pour le climat des forêts tropicales. World Resources Institute, n.d. https://files.wri.org/d8/s3fs-public/2023-10/how-carbon-markets-systematically-undervalue-tropical-forests-climate-benefits-french.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Nugent |first1=Nick |last2=Seymour |first2=Frances |title=Comment les marchés du carbone sous- estiment-ils systématiquement les bénéfices pour le climat des forêts tropicales |publisher=World Resources Institute |url=https://files.wri.org/d8/s3fs-public/2023-10/how-carbon-markets-systematically-undervalue-tropical-forests-climate-benefits-french.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{nugentndcomment, author = {Nugent, Nick and Seymour, Frances}, title = {{Comment les marchés du carbone sous- estiment-ils systématiquement les bénéfices pour le climat des forêts tropicales}}, institution = {World Resources Institute}, url = {https://files.wri.org/d8/s3fs-public/2023-10/how-carbon-markets-systematically-undervalue-tropical-forests-climate-benefits-french.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }