Abatement curves summarize the costs that are involved in reduction of pollution, in this case net greenhouse gas emissions, based on the volume of various types of emissions and the expected cost per unit emission reduction. Such representations support policy development, identifying an initial focus on the low-cost high-volume emission categories. Four approaches are described and compared to do such analysis for tropical forest margins in the context of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and (forest) degradation. The four
methods, of increasing complexity and costs of data collection are appropriate in different steps along the pathway to negotiated agreements that can meet ‘Free and Prior Informed Consent’ standards, while reducing overall transaction costs by early warnings for cases that are unlikely to lead to mutually beneficial agreements.