If we were to add it up, the real value of the Cofán Ranger Program would be the sum of the economic values resulting from their contribution to:

• Biodiversity conservation
• Endangered species protection
• Watershed protection
• Erosion prevention
• Cultural preservation
• Prevented CO₂ emissions

The calculation of each one of these values, however, harbors its own international, decades-long, scientific, political and economic debate.

While we won't jump headfirst into the details of all of these values here, we will provide a basic idea of the value involved by taking a look at the final category of prevented CO₂ emissions:

Prevented CO₂ emissions by reducing deforestation

Carbon is an important topic these days as the planet heats up, glaciers and polar regions melt, weather patterns are changing, and concerned humans try to figure out how to return the CO₂ and other greenhouse gases we've been pumping into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution back into the earth.

This new goal has resulted in a commercial market value for CO₂, usually expressed as $/metric ton of CO₂ equivalent. The basic idea of market-based trading systems is that an entity, be it a business, organization, government or the like, starts with a certain number of credits based on its historic emissions, and if an entity wants to emit more CO₂, it buys credits from others. If it doesn't emit CO₂,  it can sell its credits to others.  Emissions trading markets already exist at the level of large-scale businesses and utilities and voluntary carbon markets exist at the level of individuals and smaller environmentally-conscious businesses (Learn More about emissions trading).

Scientists calculate that almost 13% of the CO₂ emissions on the planet come from deforestation and forest degradation (see below for details). That is a lot of carbon, and it places those who manage huge tracts of forest, like the Cofán, in an interesting position.

The Cofán Territories include over one million acres of intact forests in Northern Ecuador

Realizing its potential role in the carbon game, the Cofan Survival Fund has partnered with multiple organizations to understand just how big a player it is and how it all works. After over a year of research, the Cofán now have an answer to the question: "What is the economic value of the carbon that the Cofán keep in the forests every year by preventing deforestation?"

Arriving at this number required serious science involving specialized scientific and economic teams for satellite image analysis, field measurements, literature reviews, crunching numbers, and arriving to a consensus about the calculations made and their resulting estimates.

The institutions involved in funding and undertaking the Cofán carbon work to date include:

• The Nature Conservancy
• The Global Conservation Fund - Conservation International
• USAID - The United States Agency for International Development
• The University of California, Santa Barbara. - The Donald Bren School of Environmental Science and Management at the University of California, Santa Barbara
• GeoPlaDes - A Geographic Information Systems Consulting Firm
• EcoDecision - An Environmental Economics Consulting Group

Funds invested in this important work total over $450,000 to date.

Results Summary

Here's the Cofán carbon story, simplified and bulleted to make it easy to follow along:

• Deforestation and forest degradation on the planet account for 12.2% of global green house gas emissions in the form of CO₂:

Click the image for a larger version and data citation references. Deforestation (Under "land-use change") is represented by the color green.

1996

The deforested area (shown in red) expanded massively during a 10-year period. The striated pattern is created as deforestation follows road construction. The Cofán territory remained forested.

• Of course, the calculation is not that straightforward... since there are many different forest types in the Cofán territories and each would release a different amount of CO₂ if deforested... also, each portion of their territory would be deforested at a different rate depending on its proximity to roads, population centers, etc... so things get complicated, but are still manageable. So, the scientists went to work accounting for all that variability.

Below is the map showing all the ecosystem types in Northern Ecuador.  Click the map to enlarge.

Below is the resulting map of deforestation between (a) 1990 and (b) 2008 for all of Northern Ecuador. Map (c) shows the cumulative area that was deforested in blue. Click the figure to enlarge.

• Another way to look at it: If we use carbon estimates from a study from The Field Museum in the Cordillera Azul and assume that Cofán lands contain 152 tons of carbon per hectare (61.5 tons of carbon per acre), that would be 557.3 tons of CO₂ per hectare (225.5 tons CO₂ per acre). That means that every year the 500,000 hectares (1 million acres) of Cofán healthy forests sequester 225.5 million tons of CO₂ or 61.5 million tons of carbon!

After all these calculations, are you interested in offsetting your own personal carbon emissions from traveling by car and plane, using air conditioning and heating, and other everyday activities?

Join our Campaign for 5000 - Become a Sustaining Member of our Cofán Rangers and offset your own carbon emissions!