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Impacts of Chilean forest subsidies on forest cover, carbon and biodiversity

Nature Sustainability volume 3, pages 701–709 (2020)Cite this article

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Abstract

In response to the important benefits forests provide, there is a growing effort to reforest the world. Past policies and current commitments indicate that many of these forests will be plantations. Since plantations often replace more carbon-rich or biodiverse land covers, this approach to forest expansion may undermine objectives of increased carbon storage and biodiversity. We use an econometric land use change model to simulate the carbon and biodiversity impacts of subsidy driven plantation expansion in Chile between 1986 and 2011. A comparison of simulations with and without subsidies indicates that payments for afforestation increased tree cover through expansion of plantations of exotic species but decreased the area of native forests. Chile’s forest subsidies probably decreased biodiversity without increasing total carbon stored in aboveground biomass. Carefully enforced safeguards on the conversion of natural ecosystems can improve both the carbon and biodiversity outcomes of reforestation policies.

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Fig. 1: Overview of research approach.

Data availability

All data needed to replicate our results are available on the Harvard Dataverse at https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/6RDDQH.

Code availability

All code needed to replicate our results are available on github at https://github.com/rheilmayr/chile_subsidies.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship under grant no. DGE-1147470, the Robert and Patricia Switzer Foundation and Stanford University’s Emmett Interdisciplinary Program for Environment and Resources. FONDECYT project no. 1181374 funded field sampling of vascular plants. The Argentinean Comisión Nacional de Actividades Espaciales donated several satellite images from its archive. R. Fuentes, E. Tasar and J. Scrivner provided research assistance in support of this project.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Environmental Studies Program, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

    Robert Heilmayr

  2. Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

    Robert Heilmayr

  3. Facultad de Ciencias Forestales, Universidad de Concepción, Santiago, Chile

    Cristian Echeverría

  4. Millennium Nucleus Center for the Socioeconomic Impact of Environmental Policies, Santiago, Chile

    Cristian Echeverría

  5. School of Earth, Energy & Environment Sciences and Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Eric F. Lambin

  6. Georges Lemaître Earth and Climate Research Centre, Earth and Life Institute, Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain, Belgium

    Eric F. Lambin

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  1. Robert Heilmayr
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  2. Cristian Echeverría
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Contributions

R.H., C.E. and E.F.L. conceived of the research. R.H. and C.E. collected data. R.H. conducted analysis. R.H., C.E. and E.F.L. wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Robert Heilmayr.

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Supplementary Information

Supplementary methods, references, Fig. 1 and Tables 1–4.

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Heilmayr, R., Echeverría, C. & Lambin, E.F. Impacts of Chilean forest subsidies on forest cover, carbon and biodiversity. Nat Sustain 3, 701–709 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-020-0547-0

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