New standard to help forestry projects enter carbon market

A new global standard launched today will put in place a robust assessment scheme for ensuring agriculture and forestry protection projects are environmentally sustainable and credible providers of carbon offsets.

Projects to tackle deforestation and reduce the carbon impact of agricultural practices can now be verified against the new Voluntary Carbon Standard (VCS) and issue credits that can be sold on the global carbon market.

David Antonioli, chief executive of the VCS Association (VCSA) said the new standard will help boost investment in forestry projects, which in the past have been criticised for struggling to adequately demonstrate whether the carbon offsets they sell relate to real emission reductions.

"The new VCS rules will drive much needed investment into protecting the world’s threatened forests as a means to stabilise our global climate," he said.

Experts hope the move means that developing nations will eventually be able to make more money from protecting forests and land than they can from clearing forests for agriculture and timber.

Agriculture and forestry practices together account for about a third of all global greenhouse gas emissions, and improving their sustainability is seen as vital to slowing climate change.

Until now, most projects to improve their sustainability have been excluded from international carbon markets because of concerns over the extent to which emission reductions can be accurately measured.

For example, critics have claimed that offset credits issued on the assumption that trees planted as part of an afforestation scheme will last 100 years have no way of absolutely guaranteeing those trees will survive. They have also argued that it is difficult to prove that tracts of forest would not have survived, regardless of the funding generated by selling offset credits.

As a result, forestry credits are not included in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, are difficult to certify under the UN's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), and are avoided by some carbon offset providers.

However, the new standard hopes to address concerns about the validity of forestry credits.

The standard has been reviewed by an independent panel of leading risk experts, verifiers, investors, NGO representatives and project developers to ensure that all projects are worthy of credits and are additional – or would not have happened without the funding generated through selling credits.

It also requires more vigorous verification of project's environmental credentials by two independent parties, features clearer guidelines on how projects should avoid negative environmental and social impacts associated with some previous schemes, and sets out guidance on which types of scheme are most appropriate for different parts of the world.

Earlier this year, the proposed standard secured support from the Stockholm Environment Institute, which released a report claiming that it addresses " many permanence and additionality concerns" that have previously held back the take up of such projects in global carbon markets.

Toby Janson-Smith, a director with Conservation International said the standards should help improve confidence in forestry projects. "Today's launch of the VCS rules will not only boost market confidence in forest carbon activities but also, for the first time, enable projects that benefit local communities and biodiversity to access significant new global investment," he said.

The standard could also help provide a boost to the sector ahead of critical UN talks at Poznan in Poland next month, where the international community will again discuss better incorporating forestry projects in the CDM.

It was agreed at the last round of talks in Ghana that forestry credits should be incorporated into the CDM, but precisely how this will be achieved is yet to be finalised.