Forests have significant potential to help mitigate climate change. Trees absorb carbon dioxide from the air and store it in their trunks, branches, roots and soil. Private finance channeled through Carbon credits are one way to finance this mitigation. However, market-based approaches to forest carbon projects have faced many challenges to date. Public skepticism about forest carbon markets suggests the need to thoroughly examine the carbon credit certification system.<\/p>\n
A carbon credit is the basic unit of trade in all carbon markets and represents 1 metric ton of CO2 emissions avoided or CO2 removed from the atmosphere. Credits generated from projects in North America fall into three main categories: improved forest management (IFM), afforestation\/reforestation (AR), and avoidance of planned forest conversion (AC). The carbon credit market operates under either \u201ccompliance\u201d or \u201cvoluntary\u201d systems. The voluntary carbon market (VCM) is organized by independent, non-profit organizations known as registries that set the rules for quantifying credits and manage and track verified carbon credits. Registries set their own rules according to \u201cprotocols\u201d (or methodologies\/standards) that determine the types of eligible projects and how credits are calculated.<\/p>\n
However, the system for developing, certifying, selling and retiring forest carbon credits as offsets is fraught with problems. The scientific and economic complexities of assessing the true climate impact of forest carbon projects and the absence of a centralized oversight system have likely led to widespread overvaluation of credits. As a result, low-quality forest carbon credits with little potential for climate benefit are sometimes used to offset fossil fuel emissions, undermining progress towards meeting climate change mitigation goals.<\/p>\n
A study that evaluated existing protocols relevant to North America found that most protocols received low overall ratings and none were rated as robust<\/strong>Only one new protocol, which had not yet issued credits at the time of the evaluation, was assessed as satisfactory due to improvements in the approach to demonstrating additionality. The study concluded that existing protocols do not guarantee that carbon credits are consistently real, high quality, and accurately represent 1 tonne of emissions avoided, reduced, or removed<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Protocols should address four essential components for a project to deliver real and lasting climate benefits: reducing the risk of non-permanence, additionality and baseline setting, quantification and monitoring requirements, and accounting for leakage. The evaluation found that protocols\u2019 approaches to these key components are often inadequate. For example, many approaches to assessing the risk of non-permanence are not based on the best available science, and they cannot robustly account for spatial variability in current risk or the increase in risk due to climate change<\/strong>. In the area of additionality and baselines, most protocols scored less than satisfactory. Current approaches to baselines, particularly in IFM and AC projects, have often been assessed as weak, relying on static models rather than dynamic observations. In quantification and monitoring, protocols vary in the accuracy of biomass estimation and the reliability of measurements, with Quantifying soil carbon remains a significant technical challenge<\/strong>Leakage, i.e. the transfer of emissions outside the project boundary, is considered one of the most problematic aspects and existing protocols likely significantly underestimate it<\/strong>.<\/p>\n The authors offer recommendations on how protocols can be strengthened. Key recommendations include: require a reassessment of the risk of fragility at least every 5 years using independent scientific data<\/strong>, to ensure that baselines were dynamic, transparent and adaptable to changing conditions<\/strong>, not include soil carbon gains in credits<\/strong> and fundamentally revise the consideration of leakage<\/strong> at regional to global levels. They also emphasize the need for radical improvements in transparency and resolution of conflicts of interest of independent verification bodies.<\/p>\n The overall low score of the evaluated protocols indicates the critical need for innovation<\/strong>, if the forest carbon credits model is to gain credibility. Current protocols cannot guarantee that all forest carbon credits are of sufficient quality to be interchangeable with 1 tonne of fossil fuel emissions in the context of offsets. Also of concern is that many credits currently on the market were issued under older, probably even weaker versions of the protocols<\/strong>. The purchase of existing forest carbon credits should therefore be subject to a detailed quality assessment. Improving protocols requires significant changes and collaboration between scientists, investors and market participants. While these improvements could reduce the volume of credits issued, they should promote consistently real and high-quality credits. In addition to offsets, there are other models of financing forest solutions that could mobilize private finance without the precision and permanence required for offsets. Spring<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n
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