Forest vs. fuel – how could the politically fostered demand for energy crops influence the effectiveness of REDD+ instruments?

We present results from an agent based model that is designed to study the effects of different instruments for climate change mitigation. The policy instruments are a fostered demand for bioenergy and REDD+-like instruments that set incentives for land users to conserve carbon stock on their land. We test how the performance of these instruments is influenced by economic and ecological conditions of the region where they are applied. We find that for fostered demands for energy crops some designs of REDD+-like instruments are more effective than others. We also show that the effectiveness of the instruments depends on the economic site-conditions.