The global climate crisis is one of the most pressing challenges of our time, exacerbating existing social and environmental issues. Regulating ecosystem services, and climate regulation in particular, plays a fundamental role in mitigating the effects of climate change. In this regard, terrestrial ecosystems play a crucial role as stocks for carbon that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere, causing further warming, as well as being potential carbon sinks. Terrestrial ecosystems, particularly forests, are thus essential to addressing the global climate crisis. For these reasons, it is important to include carbon in the World Bank's Changing Wealth of Nations (CWON) wealth estimates. This analysis was carried out by the Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3), which develops multidisciplinary knowledge to support decision-making on this global challenge. Within the research center, the Artificial Intelligence for Environment and Sustainability (ARIES) team developed an integrated modeling system with a platform capable of combining data and models to study the interaction of human and natural systems, with a strong focus on the environment and sustainability dimensions. More information is provided in this report to briefly describe how the modeling integration based on artificial intelligence (AI) and semantics is used to obtain results aligned with the World Bank's CWON approach. The global model to estimate vegetation carbon stock used in this analysis quantifies how the global landscape is changing as a result of ecological transformations that occur at biophysical (environmental), social, and economic levels. In the context of the CWON program, the World Bank collaborates with the BC3 team, who developed the ARIES for System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA) platform, to create global baseline biophysical and monetary accounts of the carbon storage ecosystem service.
Authors
Bulckaen, Alessio, Viñas, Raul Abad, Paz, Diego Bengochea, Crespo, Ruben, Villa,Ferdinando
- Disclosure Date
- 2024/10/14
- Disclosure Status
- Disclosed
- Doc Name
- The Changing Wealth of Nations : Global Estimates of Carbon Stocks in the Vegetation and Soils of Terrestrial Ecosystems - Technical Report
- Pages
- 84
- Product Line
- Advisory Services & Analytics
- Published in
- United States of America
- Rel Proj ID
- 1W-The Changing Wealth Of Nations (Cwon) 2.0 -- P178446
- TF No/Name
- TF0B8116-CWON 2.0 Data,TF0B8149-CWON 2.0 Analytics,TF0B8562-CWON 2.0 Developing global ecosystem accounts for carbon storage,TF0B9008-4.2.- Producing blue natural capital accounts for The Changing Wealth o,TF0B9400-CWON 2.0 contribution to PROGREEN objectives,TF0B9609-CWON 2.0 Roadmap for pilot water account,TF0C0675-Integrating natural capital into global CGE models,TF0C0984-Integrating renewable energy into the national wealth accounts and anal,TF0C1352-Developing Adjusted Net Savings Indicators
- Unit Owning
- Planet - GLOBAL ENR PM (SENGL)
- Version Type
- Final
- Volume No
- 1
Table of Contents
- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 3
- TABLE OF CONTENTS 4
- TABLES 6
- FIGURES 6
- ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS 8
- 1.1 THE IMPORTANCE OF THE ECOSYSTEMS PROVIDING 9
- THE CARBON REGULATION 9
- SERVICE 9
- 1.2 LATEST STUDIES ON FOREST ECOSYSTEMS 9
- 1 Introduction 9
- 1.3 CARBON STOCK VALUATION IN BIOPHYSICAL AND 10
- MONETARY TERMS MAIN 10
- DRIVERS OF CHANGE AND 10
- INTERPRETATION OF RESULTS 10
- 1.4 THE ARIES APPROACH TO INTEROPERABILITY ONGOING 11
- PRODUCTION OF RESULTS 11
- USING STATE-OF-THE-ART 11
- SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE 11
- 2.1 VEGETATION CARBON BIOMASS 13
- 2 Overview of the Carbon Stock Estimates 13
- 2.2 ESTIMATING SOIL ORGANIC CARBON STORAGE STOCKS 19
- 3 Monetary valuation of Carbon Retention in ARIES for SEEA 20
- 4 Recommendation for Future Developments and Improvements 22
- 5.1 VEGETATION CARBON STOCK RESULTS AGGREGATED 24
- BY COUNTRY 24
- 5 Discussion of Results 24
- 5.2 VEGETATION CARBON STOCK RESULTS DISAGGREGATED BY 28
- LAND COVER CLASS 28
- 5.3 SOIL ORGANIC CARBON RESULTS DISAGGREGATED 42
- BY LAND COVER CLASS 42
- 6 Comparative Assessment of vegetation Carbon Stock Results 43
- 6.1 INTRODUCTION 43
- 6.2 COMPARATIVE ASSESSMENT OF AREAS 45
- 6.3 ISSUES WITH LAND CLASSIFICATION SYSTEMS 47
- 6.4 COMPARATIVE ASSESSMENT OF CARBON STOCKS IN 49
- VEGETATION 49
- 7 Summary and Next Steps 53
- References 54
- Appendix 1 Country-specific background information used for the comparative assessment included in section 6 57
- Appendix 2 Aligning the terrestrial results produced in ARIES with the carbon contribution of mangrove ecosystems 63
- THE DIFFICULTY OF INTEGRATING MANGROVE AND VEGETATION CARBON STORAGE RESULTS 63
- RECONCILING SOIL ORGANIC CARBON AMONG DATA SOURCES 64
- Appendix 3 Large yearly differences in the vegetation carbon stock not explained by land cover changes 65
- Appendix 4 Report of the causes of large changes in vegetation carbon stock of individual land cover classes 75
- Appendix 5 Report of the causes of large relative changes in vegetation carbon stock of individual land cover classes 82
