Working Paper N° 3/2024: Options for achieving the forest related goals of Bolivia´s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs): Results from the UCISS-Bolivia model

Summary

This paper presents the Updated Conservation Incentives Spreadsheet for Bolivia (UCISS-Bolivia) tool and uses it to analyze the options and trade-offs involved in achieving the forest related goals of Bolivia’s NDCs. UCISS-Bolivia is an Excel-based tool for analyzing the potential effects of different incentives to reduce deforestation. It is based on a spatial econometric model of deforestation in Bolivia during the period 2016-2021, and uses information on forest cover, deforestation rates, geographical conditions, and drivers of deforestation, including agricultural opportunity costs, for more than 120,000 pixels covering the whole country. The model can help answer questions such as: Where in Bolivia does it make most sense to reduce deforestation? What kind of incentives are most effective at reducing deforestation? How much money will it take to reduce deforestation by a given amount? This kind of simulations are helpful for designing the key elements of a Joint Mitigation and Adaptation Mechanism for the Integral and Sustainable Management of Forests.

. 

Spreadsheet Tool

UCISS-Bolivia is a free, transparent, accessible, open-source spreadsheet tool, designed to support international and national decision making on incentives to reduce deforestation by allowing users to estimate and map emissions reductions, forest cover change and revenue generation across alternative incentive design options.   It builds upon OSIRIS-Bolivia and the original international OSIRIS module: Busch, J., B. Strassburg, A. Cattaneo, R. Lubowski, A. Bruner, R. Rice, A. Creed, R. Ashton, F. Boltz (2010).