Economic costs of global forest protection may be overstated

Nepal, P., Waldron, A., Prestemon, J.P., Gopalakrishna, T., & Jung, M. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7569-1390 (2026). Economic costs of global forest protection may be overstated. Nature Communications 10.1038/s41467-026-73569-0. (In Press)

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Abstract

Protecting the world’s remaining forests is central to climate and biodiversity goals, but is often assumed to impose large opportunity costs on forest-land producers. These costs are typically estimated by summing local foregone production, without accounting for market feedback. Here, we applied partial-equilibrium models to three scenarios protecting an additional 471–863 million hectares of forest, assuming a global 30% protection target by 2030. Despite reductions in harvestable area and roundwood production, global net output value in the forestry sector increases modestly, driven by price increases under reduced supply. Most countries experience gains, although some incur losses. Despite broader economic impacts, including consumer welfare, substitution effects, and cross-sector response not being captured in this analysis, these results may indicate that approaches ignoring price adjustments may overestimate producer-side opportunity costs of large-scale forest protection.

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