A Global Assessment of Regional Forest Carbon Leakage

Improved forest management (IFM) practices are recognized as high-impact, low-cost natural climate solutions. Unfortunately, leakage accounting often relies on limited analysis and ad hoc reasoning, leading to integrity concerns and underinvestment in IFM. This study proposes an alternative data-intensive, dynamic economic-ecological modeling approach with global applicability. Results show how leakage varies by IFM project type, location, timeframe, and implementation rate. Critically, we show that widely cited harvest or land leakage measures ignore complex forest dynamics and are a poor proxy for the more meaningful metric, carbon leakage. While harvest leakage is nearly always positive, some project designs can result in beneficial carbon spillovers. The study improves the evidence base for robust leakage quantification in IFM carbon projects, enabling more accurate accounting and ensuring credible climate benefits.