Carbon sequestration potential of community forests in Bhutan: a possible forest carbon pathway, trade-offs, and stakeholder perceptions

Sigyel Delma; Don Gilmour; Francis E Putz; Katherine Warner; Liz Sousa Ota; Karma Jigme Temphel; John Herbohn

doi:10.1186/s13021-025-00379-0

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Carbon sequestration potential of community forests in Bhutan: a possible forest carbon pathway, trade-offs, and stakeholder perceptions

Journal article

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Carbon sequestration potential of community forests in Bhutan: a possible forest carbon pathway, trade-offs, and stakeholder perceptions

Sigyel Delma, Don Gilmour, Francis E Putz, Katherine Warner, Liz Sousa Ota, Karma Jigme Temphel and John Herbohn

Carbon Balance and Management, Vol.21(1), pp.1-13

2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s13021-025-00379-0

PMCID: PMC12888610

PMID: 41530454

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Abstract

Stakeholder perceptions

Foregone timber harvests

Forest carbon pathway

Trade-offs

The Bhutan Government is exploring ways to generate revenue from its forest carbon. Community Forestry can contribute to this goal because of the presence of functioning Community Forest Management Groups (CFMGs) that can exercise effective local authority to ensure the adoption of management practices aimed at increasing carbon sequestration. Here we present a preliminary analysis of the issues associated with forgoing timber harvests in community forests as a potential forest-based carbon pathway. Assuming 50% leakage and transaction costs of $US 7 MgCO2−1, the carbon break-even price needed to compensate a sample of 20 CFMGs for forgoing legally permitted timber harvests averaged $35 MgCO2−1 (95% confidence interval 27–42). Under this scenario, an estimated $5 million ($45 ha−1) annually would be required to compensate CFMGs for an additional carbon sequestration benefit of 151,012 MgCO2, but this value is sensitive to factors such as leakage rates, transaction costs, and market conditions. Stakeholder perceptions about the trade-offs involved in managing community forests for carbon revealed a mix of positive and negative views across different stakeholder groups, highlighting both commonalties and differences. Before Bhutan engages in forest-based carbon markets, clarity is needed on issues such as carbon ownership, additionality, transaction costs, leakage, regulation of carbon sales and benefit distribution. By exploring the carbon pathway of forgoing timber harvesting and identifying the major information needs to engage in carbon markets, we provide the key elements of a framework for discussion of this and other forest carbon pathways (e.g., thinning and reforestation) to inform policy decision making.

Details

Title: Carbon sequestration potential of community forests in Bhutan: a possible forest carbon pathway, trade-offs, and stakeholder perceptions
Authors: Sigyel Delma (Corresponding Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Forest Research Institute
Don Gilmour - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Tropical Forests and People Research Centre
Francis E Putz - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Forest Research Institute
Katherine Warner - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Tropical Forests and People Research Centre
Liz Sousa Ota - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Forest Research Institute
Karma Jigme Temphel - Green Bhutan Corporation Limited (Bhutan)
John Herbohn - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Forest Research Institute
Publication details: Carbon Balance and Management, Vol.21(1), pp.1-13
Publisher: BioMed Central Ltd.
Date published: 2026
DOI: 10.1186/s13021-025-00379-0
ISSN: 1750-0680
PMID: 41530454; PMC12888610
Copyright note: This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
Data Availability: No datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.
Grants: Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship, RTP, Department of Education (Australia, Canberra)
Grant note: This work was supported by the tuition fee offset scholarship from the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research and Innovation), the University of the Sunshine Coast.
Organisation Unit: Australian Centre for Pacific Islands Research; Tropical Forests and People Research Centre; Forest Research Institute; School of Law and Society
Language: English
Record Identifier: 991198910302621
Output Type: Journal article

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