Like many others, we at the American Forest
Foundation closely followed the discussions at
COP26.
As a national conservation organization working to address our biggest
environmental challenge through our Family Forest Carbon
Program,
discussions around carbon markets are critical to how we conduct our work with
landowners and carbon credit buyers.
While carbon markets have been operating since the early 2000s, each forest
carbon project has been created independently. Standalone efforts on large,
5,000-plus acre tracts of industrial forestland — each project had its own,
complex way of operating and measuring the carbon sequestered. Overall, these
projects have been fractured, inconsistent and limited.
In response, corporate carbon-credit
buyers
have had to conduct lengthy due diligence to evaluate
projects.
Even basic terms such as ‘carbon credits’ or ‘climate mitigation’ were
interpreted differently by different projects. As a result, every deal was done
privately. This limited market participation seeded doubt and criticism and kept
the broader community from learning and advancing critical work together to
address climate change.
What has been sorely needed is an agreed-upon international framework that
broadly establishes who can sell carbon credits; who can buy them and for what
purpose; and what constitutes a quality carbon credit.
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COP26 took a major step towards such a framework, as negotiators came to an
agreement on Article 6 of the Paris
Agreement
that lays an outline for an international carbon market. While the agreement
focuses its attention on establishing a global compliance market across
countries, overall themes can be applied to the voluntary carbon as well.
Below are three takeaways from the Article 6 agreement that will positively
affect the climate, project developers, carbon market buyers and, most
importantly, the landowners and communities whose livelihood depends on forests:
1. Carbon markets are a legitimate tool in our global effort to avert catastrophic global warming.
Perhaps the most salient takeaway is the agreement on Article 6 means
international leaders and stakeholders acknowledge carbon markets are a
necessary conservation-finance
tool
that can truly help improve the health of our forests and increase their carbon
potential. While these markets are not the only tool and should be used
alongside other action, they are a cost-effective mechanism for combatting
climate change.
2. Climate finance has a path to support and empower rural communities and smallholders.
Historically, small land holders and family forest owners were blocked from
enrolling in and financially benefiting from carbon markets. Now, Article 6 will
enable the growth of a market under which rural communities can gain access to
significant and steady flows of funding in exchange for transitioning to more
sustainable land management practices.
Already, we at AFF — with our partner, The Nature Conservancy (TNC) —
have developed one such program that specializes in supporting rural American
forest owners: the Family Forest Carbon
Program.
The Family Forest Carbon Program empowers family forest owners to manage their
forests in ways that sequester and store more carbon. Our program provides
companies with an opportunity to purchase verified carbon credits from an
authentic and inclusive source. While we are actively growing, our reach to
forest owners is limited by our access to capital to finance an expansive
presence. This limits our carbon credit supply to buyers. Now, proper
investments in climate innovation will be accelerated.
3. The quality of carbon credits is key.
For carbon markets to work, carbon credits must represent real, additional and
permanent reductions in the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. The
negotiators at COP resolutely held to this belief. Like other organizations,
such as the Taskforce on Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets and the Science
Based Targets Initiative, leaders are signaling the paramount importance of
establishing rigorous and transparent standards of the climate mitigation of
carbon projects. All of us — NGOs, carbon developers, carbon buyers and academic
institutions — must rise to this standard if our efforts are to truly have a
meaningful impact in fighting climate change.
Through the Family Forest Carbon Program, AFF and TNC are innovating to raise
the bar on credit integrity. We have developed a new carbon-accounting
methodology that uses an observed, dynamic baseline — advancing the accuracy and
transparency of our verified carbon credits. We have also made clear commitments
to long-term monitoring and continuous support for our program enrollees well
after their participation in our program. We challenge others to join us to
innovate and evolve, so that all stakeholders are confident that one carbon
credit represents one ton of real, additional and permanent CO2.
The delegations at COP26 have done their job. It’s now up to the players — both
the sellers and the buyers — to demand and deliver on this framework for the
benefit of the climate and the world’s rural communities.
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American Forest Foundation
Published Dec 16, 2021 1pm EST / 10am PST / 6pm GMT / 7pm CET