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Chaib et al. Carbon Footprints 2026, 5, 23 Page 15 of 23

Table 5. Estimated carbon credit revenues and restoration area under different price scenarios

Price (US$ Annual credits Annual revenue Estimated cassava Estimated agroforestry Estimated pasture
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tCO2e ) (tCO 2 e year ) (US$ year ) area (ha) area (ha) area (ha)
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20 2,032 40,640 28 6.8 136
30 2,032 60,960 42 10.2 203
40 2,032 81,280 56 13.5 271

Climate-resilience finance
Illustrative restoration potential from avoided deforestation credits
Nature-based and forestry credits with strong sustainable-development co-benefits generally were traded at a
premium relative to undifferentiated units. Ecosystem Marketplace’s State of the Voluntary Carbon
Markets reports average prices for forestry and land-use credits in the range of a few US dollars per ton,
[69]
with higher-quality segments, such as removals or strong co-benefits, often transacting in the mid-teens to
low twenties (around US$15-25 per ton of equivalent CO , US$ tCO e ). World Bank State and Trends of
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2
2
Carbon Pricing [70,71] reports highlight that carbon prices compatible with Paris-aligned trajectories need to
move towards at least US$25-50 tCO e by 2030. This study hence applies an illustrative credit price band of
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2
US$20-40 tCO e for high-integrity, co-benefit-certified avoided deforestation units, which is conservative
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2
relative to compliance market prices yet within the upper range of recent voluntary-market transactions for
premium nature-based credits.
On the cost side, Embrapa studies of family-farming cassava systems in the eastern Amazon report
establishment costs of R$7,400-9,600 ha under predominantly manual operations [72,73] , which corresponds to
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roughly US$1,300-1,700 ha in 2022 prices for a representative smallholder cassava field in Pará, neighboring
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state of Amapá. Independent economic analyses of smallholder agroforestry systems in Pará, including
cocoa-based arrangements, indicate substantially higher establishment costs: on the order of R$20,000 ha -1
for a relatively simple cocoa-banana arrangement and R$39,000 ha for a more diversified
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cocoa-açaí-cassava-maize system, implying approximately US$4,000-8,000 ha depending on the exchange
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rate . Complementary macro-level estimates from the Brazilian Bioeconomy Observatory and associated
[74]
pasture-restoration cost studies suggest that recovering degraded pastures in Brazil typically requires
R$900-R$1,800 ha for moderately degraded areas and R$1,500-2,400 ha for severely degraded areas,
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representing roughly US$180-480 ha , depending on location and degradation level [75,76] .
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Taken together, these estimates are consistent with a stylized cost spectrum in which (i) re-establishing
annual cassava-maize plots after a flood or crop failure requires approximately US$1,300- 1,700 ha , (ii) fully
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establishing diversified cacao agroforestry systems requires several thousand US dollars per hectare, typically
around US$4,000-8,000 ha over the first three years, and (iii) basic soil and pasture rehabilitation can be
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achieved at a few hundred US dollars per hectare - roughly US$180-480 ha .
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Under the dynamic baseline derived in this study, the issuance of 2,032 carbon credits per year would yield
annual gross climate-finance inflows of approximately US$40,640, US$60,960 and US$81,280 at prices of
US$20 tCO e , US$30 tCO e and US$40 tCO e , respectively [Table 5]. Using the cost benchmarks above,
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-1
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2
2
2
these amounts would be sufficient, in order of magnitude, to finance the re-establishment of roughly 30-60
ha of cassava-based cropping or about 7-14 ha of diversified agroforestry per year, while basic pasture
rehabilitation could be implemented over on the order of 130-270 additional hectares given its lower
per-hectare cost.