IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/tcpoxx/v18y2018i1p42-48.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The contribution of forest carbon credit projects to addressing the climate change challenge

Author

Listed:
  • Wytze van der Gaast
  • Richard Sikkema
  • Moriz Vohrer

Abstract

This article addresses the question of how forestry projects, given the recently improved standards for the accounting of carbon sequestration, can benefit from existing and emerging carbon markets in the world. For a long time, forestry projects have been set up for the purpose of generating carbon credits. They were surrounded by uncertainties about the permanence of carbon sequestration in trees, potential replacement of deforestation due to projects (leakage), and how and what to measure as sequestered carbon. Through experience with Joint Implementation (JI) and Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) forestry projects, albeit limited, and with forestry projects in voluntary carbon markets, considerable improvements have been made with accounting of carbon sequestration in forests, resulting in a more solid basis for carbon credit trading. The scope of selling these credits exists both in compliance markets, although currently with strong limitations, and in voluntary markets for offsetting emissions with carbon credits. Improved carbon accounting methods for forestry investments can also enhance the scope for forestry in the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) that countries must prepare under the Paris Agreement.POLICY RELEVANCEThis article identifies how forestry projects can contribute to climate change mitigation. Forestry projects have addressed a number of challenges, like reforestation, afforestation on degraded lands, and long-term sustainable forest management. An interesting new option for forestry carbon projects could be the NDCs under the Paris Agreement in December 2015. Initially, under CDM and JI, the number of forestry projects was far below that for renewable energy projects. With the adoption of the Paris Agreement, both developed and developing countries have agreed on NDCs for country-specific measures on climate change mitigation, and increased the need for investing in new measures. Over the years, considerable experience has been built up with forestry projects that fix CO2 over a long-term period. Accounting rules are nowadays at a sufficient level for the large potential of forestry projects to deliver a reliable, additional contribution towards reducing or halting emissions from deforestation and forest degradation activities worldwide.

Suggested Citation

  • Wytze van der Gaast & Richard Sikkema & Moriz Vohrer, 2018. "The contribution of forest carbon credit projects to addressing the climate change challenge," Climate Policy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(1), pages 42-48, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:tcpoxx:v:18:y:2018:i:1:p:42-48
    DOI: 10.1080/14693062.2016.1242056
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/14693062.2016.1242056
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/14693062.2016.1242056?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Benjamin S. Thompson, 2023. "Impact investing in biodiversity conservation with bonds: An analysis of financial and environmental risk," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(1), pages 353-368, January.
    2. Hisky Ryan Kawulur & Erwin Saraswati & Abdul Ghofar & Arum Prastiwi, 2024. "Carbon Strategy, Political Connection and Carbon Performance: Evidence from Polluting Industries," International Journal of Energy Economics and Policy, Econjournals, vol. 14(4), pages 251-264, July.
    3. Juan Wu & Fangmiao Hou & Wenjing Yu, 2021. "The Effect of Carbon Sink Plantation Projects on Local Economic Growth: An Empirical Analysis of County-Level Panel Data from Guangdong Province," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(24), pages 1-19, December.
    4. Filewod, Ben & McCarney, Geoff, 2023. "Avoiding leakage from nature-based offsets by design," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 117927, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    5. Hou, Guolong & Delang, Claudio O. & Lu, Xixi & Olschewski, Roland, 2020. "Optimizing rotation periods of forest plantations: The effects of carbon accounting regimes," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C).
    6. Li, Lili & Zhang, Daowei, 2024. "Forest carbon offset protocols in compliance carbon markets," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 165(C).
    7. Leonie Netter & Eike Luedeling & Cory Whitney, 2022. "Agroforestry and reforestation with the Gold Standard-Decision Analysis of a voluntary carbon offset label," Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, Springer, vol. 27(2), pages 1-26, February.
    8. Filewod, Ben & McCarney, Geoff, 2023. "Avoiding leakage from nature-based offsets by design," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 117928, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    9. Sinha, Avik & Tiwari, Sunil & Saha, Tanaya, 2024. "Modeling the behavior of renewable energy market: Understanding the moderation of climate risk factors," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 130(C).
    10. Cary, Michael, 2023. "Climate policy boosts trade competitiveness: Evidence from timber trade networks," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 188(C).
    11. Haijun Liu & Yang Wu & Dongqing Tan & Yi Chen & Haoran Wang, 2024. "CGAOA-AttBiGRU: A Novel Deep Learning Framework for Forecasting CO 2 Emissions," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 12(18), pages 1-30, September.
    12. Lauren Gifford, 2020. "“You can’t value what you can’t measure”: a critical look at forest carbon accounting," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 161(2), pages 291-306, July.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:tcpoxx:v:18:y:2018:i:1:p:42-48. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/tcpo20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.