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Abstract
Land-based activities are responsible for a large part of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, yet the
economics of land-use decisions have rarely been explicitly modeled in global mitigation studies. This
paper integrates the analysis of land use related non-CO2 emissions and carbon forest sequestration with
more conventional analyses of CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion to provide a comprehensive
assessment of the relative role of land in global GHG emissions and mitigation. For this paper, we utilize
a new general equilibrium framework which effectively captures the opportunity costs of land-use
decisions in agriculture and forestry, the implications of these decisions for GHG emissions, as well as
mitigation options in agriculture and forestry. By combining this with a more conventional analysis of
fossil fuel-based CO2 emissions mitigation, we are able to analyze trade-offs and feedbacks between GHG
emissions reductions in land-based and fossil fuel combustion intensive sectors. We explore the general
equilibrium effects when land rents are endogenous and large-scale adoption of mitigation technologies
produces feedbacks across sectors and regions.