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Identifying Leakage for Projects
Common Definition:
The IPCC Special Report on Land Use, Land-Use Change, and Forestry (2000) defines leakage as "the unanticipated decrease or increase in greenhouse gas (GHG) benefits outside of the project's accounting boundary as a result of project activities."
Importance:
The potential for leakage implies that the GHG impacts of a project may not begin and end with the immediate project boundary. Therefore, it may be necessary to 1) identify if the project has any leakage potential; 2) try to mitigate the potential for leakage through project location and design; and 3) account for any leakage when estimating total project GHG benefits.
Status:
There is currently no standard method to identify or quantify leakage effects due to GHG mitigation projects, either in agriculture and forestry or other sectors of the economy. Work on this issue is underway, however, and methods have emerged.
Example:
The classic example of leakage in forestry is a project to increase protection of a clearly threatened forest. By protecting the forest from logging, the project developer in this case could be avoiding the release of carbon dioxide (CO2) to the atmosphere (i.e., continued deforestation of the forest would be the baseline condition had the forest not been protected). However, if the demand for wood remains constant then the logging may simply be displaced to an area outside the protected (project) area. The CO2 emissions that result from the displaced logging could partially or completely negate the benefits of avoiding CO2 emissions in the protected forest. |