Mitigating Climate Change Through Carbon Sequestration for Sustainable Development: Empirical Evidence from Cameroon’s Forest Economy

Abstract

Climate change is a wicked problem that requires urgent integrated approach for progress across multiple goals. This chapter invokes the connectivity of three United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including SDGs 12, 13 and 15 to highlight the need for concerted efforts to protect, restore and promote sustainable use of forest ecosystems while mitigating climate change in Cameroon. The fulcrum is on the potentials of forest serving as the nexus for climate action. Few economic assessments on carbon supply and sequestration have been done on Africa’s forests. Beyond the direct provision of wood, the country’s forests within the Congo Basin play different roles in the carbon cycle, from net emitters to net sinks of carbon, and possibly stand to benefit from the emerging global carbon market. The case study examines a carbon supply model and reveals that the short-run sequestration potential increases with rise in expected carbon revenues, forest density and government expenditures for better management of the forest sector. Increases in wood prices, fossil fuel price, timber harvest and consumption potentials have negative and statistically significant effects on carbon supply. In the long run, wood price and forest expenditure have a positive effect on carbon capture and supply. These results have interesting implications for carbon policy for both Cameroon and other developing countries in the sub-continent. Policy will have to address broad-ranged socioeconomic and political impediments for the promotion of carbon supply and sequestration. Affordable, scalable solutions must therefore be sought to enable countries to leapfrog to cleaner, more resilient economies.