Forest offsets and the California compliance market: Bringing an abstract ecosystem good to market

In November 2013 the Downeast Lakes Land Trust registered a forest-carbon offset project with the California Air Resources Board, one of the first two “improved forest management” projects  in the nation registered for California’s greenhouse gas cap-and-trade program.

When the California carbon market launched, the Tennessee River Gorge Trust saw that it was the best opportunity to participate in a regulated carbon market, leading to an offset project that would make a commodity out of 5,000 acres of forest in its domain and double its general operating fund.

This publication offers practical guidance to land trust practitioners on drafting conservation easements to allow the development of carbon offset projects.

This pointer addresses how nature-based carbon credits work and the public perception concerns that have arisen from the carbon market.

Pacific Forest Trust is an early pioneer of techniques and standards used to create forest carbon projects—also known as emissions reductions or offset projects—which harness and protect the natural ability of forests to accumulate and hold carbon, acting as carbon “sinks” and providing essential climate benefits.

This report provides guidance to understand the complex science and policy of forest carbon as it relates to tangible problems of forest management and the more abstract problems of addressing drivers of deforestation and negotiating policy frameworks for reducing CO2 emissions from forests.

The Conservation Fund’s carbon program supports both conservation-based forest management and forest restoration projects.

This pointer provides risk evaluation considerations for carbon projects that will vary depending on the land trust’s role in the carbon project.

The Forest Legacy Program, administered by the U.S. Forest Service, protects privately owned forest land through the purchase of conservation easements or land in fee. The Forest Legacy Program has conserved more than 2.8 million acres of forested lands in nearly every state and territory.