Avoided Deforestation and "Carbon" Plantations

Deforestation generates about 15% of global greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions…but forests are also efficient carbon pumps, with GHG removals almost twice as high as emissions: forests are both part of the climate change problem and part of the solution!

The issues

Forests were forgotten at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit and the 1997 Kyoto Climate Conference: no incentives were put in place to encourage tropical countries to curb deforestation. Until the beginning of the 21st century, a forest was more valuable lying down than standing up! But in 2007, scientists realised that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions due to deforestation are as important as those of all land transport on the surface of the globe… And in 2007, the Bali Climate Conference created a mechanism to encourage countries to curb their deforestation: REDD+, or Reducing GHG emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and protecting and enhancing forest carbon stocks. Since then, more than 70 tropical countries have already committed to REDD+ and the international community agrees that forest protection must be part of the response to climate change.

Our services

The United Nations Climate Convention and various multilateral initiatives on REDD+, such as the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF), have produced thousands of pages of guidelines on REDD+… and the mechanism evolves regularly, as feedback from the field is received. Having followed the implementation of REDD+ since its inception, we have the institutional memory required to best guide actors wishing to enter this mechanism (Governments, NGOs, private companies, etc.). We advise them on the best options for deploying their REDD+ strategy, gathering the opinions of local populations, identifying the factors of deforestation, implementing field actions to avoid deforestation or reforest with good cost/benefit ratios, optimising co-benefits (biodiversity protection, local development, etc.), defining the ownership of forest carbon and identifying the actors to be remunerated, rigorously measuring the results in terms of carbon preserved compared to a “do nothing” scenario, etc. We also provide advisory support for setting up carbon projects, taking into account the ongoing negotiations under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, in particular Article 6.4, which creates a multilateral carbon credit trading system.