Book Description
Recent findings demonstrate that dryland trees are efficient carbon sinks. The price of carbon at which a farmer would be indifferent between his customary activity and the plantation of trees for the trade of carbon credits remains however unknown. Carbon yields were simulated by means of the CO2FIX v3.1 model for Pinus halepensis. Wheat yields and pasture yields were predicted on somewhat similar nitrogen-based quadratic models, using 30 years of weather data for the simulation of moisture stress. Both models were developed for dryland conditions, while calibration and validation were done with data collected in Israel on 8 stations (from 200mm to 900mm of annual precipitation). No-till wheat and pasture yield values were then fitted to a gamma probability distribution function, to enable iterative stochastic production simulation. Input and output prices were, however, fitted to a normal distribution. Stochastic production, input and output prices were afterwards simulated on a Monte Carlo matrix with 10,000 iterations on a 30 years cash flow. Results show that, despite the high levels of carbon uptake by dryland trees, carbon trading by afforesting is unprofitable anywhere along the aridity gradient. Indeed, the price of carbon will have to raise unrealistically high, and the certification costs will have to drop significantly, to make afforestation under the clean development mechanism a worthwhile activity for non annex I dryland countries."""""
