Figure 17

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Figure 17. Effects of economic, environmental and social-institutional factors on the mitigation potential of a carbon management strategy. The technical capacity (upper horizontal line, independent of cost) is reduced a combination of economic factors (markets, trade, economic structures, urbanization, industrialization); environmental factors (need for land, water and other resources, waste disposal, property rights); and institutional and social factors (class structure, politics and formal policies, informal rules, lifestyles, attitudes, behaviour). The end result is a sustainably achievable mitigation potential for the carbon management strategy being considered. This depends on the cost of carbon, which is a measure of the weight ascribed to carbon mitigation relative to other goals. The uptake proportion for the strategy is the ratio of the sustainably achievable potential to the technical potential. The figure also shows a baseline potential, representing the extent to which the carbon management strategy is deployed in a ‘business as usual’ scenario (after Raupach et al 2003).