Thanks for your engagement with our piece, Ben! We haven’t looked into the zoonotic spillover/pandemic prevention implications of REDD+. Our team’s report doesn’t consider the co-benefits of reducing deforestation that are not already encapsulated in one’s estimated/preferred social cost of carbon (SCC), given the attempt was to constrain the cost of abating a tCO2(e).
As for a very hasty first pass [not to be taken seriously]: I’m thinking that considering pandemic co-benefits is like saying the social cost of forest carbon (SCFC) > SCC. Then there’s your second point, i.e., that SCFCregion A > SCFCregion B. Unfortunately I don’t have a good intuitive sense of these inequalities, nor overall how significant considering the pandemic co-benefit would be for influencing REDD+ regional prioritization. My very rough guess is therefore that the significance – for philanthropists interested in tackling deforestation – would probably depend on (1) the magnitudes of the inequalities, including the frequency/severity of deforestation-induced pandemics, (2) the extent of overlap between forests most prone to pandemic-inducing zoonotic spillover and those with the highest deforestation reduction potential/cost-effectiveness via REDD+, (3) perhaps how promising alternative pandemic prevention strategies are, and (4) maybe even moral weights, risk preferences, and other things I haven’t considered.
Thanks for your engagement with our piece, Ben! We haven’t looked into the zoonotic spillover/pandemic prevention implications of REDD+. Our team’s report doesn’t consider the co-benefits of reducing deforestation that are not already encapsulated in one’s estimated/preferred social cost of carbon (SCC), given the attempt was to constrain the cost of abating a tCO2(e).
As for a very hasty first pass [not to be taken seriously]: I’m thinking that considering pandemic co-benefits is like saying the social cost of forest carbon (SCFC) > SCC. Then there’s your second point, i.e., that SCFCregion A > SCFCregion B. Unfortunately I don’t have a good intuitive sense of these inequalities, nor overall how significant considering the pandemic co-benefit would be for influencing REDD+ regional prioritization. My very rough guess is therefore that the significance – for philanthropists interested in tackling deforestation – would probably depend on (1) the magnitudes of the inequalities, including the frequency/severity of deforestation-induced pandemics, (2) the extent of overlap between forests most prone to pandemic-inducing zoonotic spillover and those with the highest deforestation reduction potential/cost-effectiveness via REDD+, (3) perhaps how promising alternative pandemic prevention strategies are, and (4) maybe even moral weights, risk preferences, and other things I haven’t considered.