An update on Ecuador’s national carbon assessment, and its relationship with protected areas and indigenous peoples

Abstract

Land-cover change is one of the major drivers of land degradation and associated greenhouse gas emissions. Tracking existing carbon stocks and related fluctuations is crucial to the development and employing of climate mitigation strategies. However, this cannot be properly achieved without updated datasets. In the case of the Republic of Ecuador, the most recent carbon map does not account for multiple types of carbon pools, and the most recent socio-ecological assessment of national carbon stocks is at least a decade old. Continuing to employ national policies based on such data can be limiting. In this research work, we quantified the country’s carbon stocks and examined the relationship between carbon and the distribution of protected areas and indigenous peoples. The resulting carbon map was developed using the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs (InVEST) tool, employing the WorldCover 10-meter spatial resolution European Space Agency (ESA) product, as well as national and regional carbon values. The resulting carbon map constitutes a contribution to current efforts to update national geospatial products, in order to help inform future climate mitigation policies.