탄소고정을 위한 토지이용모델 활용방안에 대한 연구

Abstract

The Kyoto Protocol and the Marrakesh Accords to the Framework Convention on Climate Change recognize Land Use, Land-Use Change, and Forest (LULUCF) activities - mainly afforestation and reforestation - as a potential means to reduce greenhouse gases in atmosphere, and, thus, to meet the emission reduction targets allocated to the developed countries. In recent years, LULUCF activity, commonly referred as carbon sink management, has received great deal of attention internationally, and many researches have been done in this area. Despite the increasing attention to carbon-sink management under climate change negotiation process and research arena, not much consideration is given to carbon-sink management in Korea except the construction of necessary statistics on the greenhouse gas emissions and removals by LULUC in National Communication under the Convention. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the feasibility of utilizing an econometric land use model to estimate the costs of carbon-sink programs in Korea. In the literature, most of economic studies of carbon-sink management evaluate the government policy which is designed to encourage the conversion of agricultural and/or marginal land to forest, and a similar approach will be employed in this study. Note that, though, this study aims to investigate the potential use of empirical land use model to assess the carbon-sink program, and, therefore, the scope of the study is limited to literature reviews on subjects and to examine the data availability to estimate the model. Actual model estimation and simulation on calculating the costs of carbon-sink programs are planned to be proceed in the subsequent study in next year. The literature review in this study is done in two parts. The one is the literature survey on the researches that connect land use changes with carbon fixation capabilities, and the other part is on the economic studies which link the econometric land use model to carbon fixation and to policy assessment. The inspection on the data availability is done in two steps, too. We, first, identify the variables required for the estimation of model based on the literature review on the economic studies. Once the variables are identified, the next step is to check if the data is available to construct each variable. We concentrate on the database published by the various government sectors. The results of this study are summarized as follows. We find out that, in Korea, the researches on land use change and carbon-fixation capability are relatively well documented and the related data are well accumulated. The main source of information for this part is Korea Forest Research Institute (KFRI). KFRI prepares LULUCF section of National Communication and provides the statistics on greenhouse gas emissions and removals associated with LULUCF activities according to Revised 1996 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories. The information on this part is important because it determines the quantity of carbon stored in unit area which will be, in turn, put into the simulation to compute the cost of carbon sink program. Therefore, a special care should be given to the assumptions made in computing the statistics on greenhouse gas emissions and removals associated with LULUCF activities. An econometric land use model, typically, employs the panel data to reflect the temporal and spatial changes in land use patterns and recognizes relative rents among competing uses, land quality, population, distance to the city as key factors that affect land use change. Constructing the key variables mentioned above in panel data format requires pre-determination on the unit of time-series and cross-sectional data series. Based on the results of data review, we find that most data are collected in yearly base, thus, it is reasonable to arrange the time-series observations annually. For the spatial unit, however, we realize that the coverages of available data vary. Some data scale down only to broad administrative regions, and some data scale further down than those. Important task in assembling panel data is maintaining the consistency of data, and determining a cross-sectional unit needs a further consideration. In conclusion, if we put aside the statistical significance of the model estimates, application of an econometric land use model to estimate the cost of carbon-sink program is feasible in Korea. The success of the subsequent study will depend on the quality of data and the flexibility and robustness of the model.