This week, ARE PhD candidate Ignacio Oliva presented his ongoing work with Bruno Pimenta, entitled "Unintended consequences of nature-based climate mitigation: Exotic natural capital and water scarcity."

Nature-based climate mitigation strategies aim to enhance carbon sequestration by protecting or restoring natural habitats. Additionally, these strategies can improve the provision of ecosystem services. However, these strategies can damage local ecosystems if they prioritize monoculture of exotic species.

In this paper, Ignacio and Bruno study the effect of intensive eucalyptus and pine plantations on freshwater provision in Chile, a country that has doubled its plantations over the last decades. Using water station public records and spatial land coverage panel data, they find that a 1% increase in tree plantations results in an average reduction of 39.64 m3/s water streamflow. They then use a back-of-the-envelope calculation to determine that the economic cost of reducing water availability by one additional square kilometer of tree plantation ranges from $3,731,366 to $22,411,111.