Scientific Certification Systems (SCS) has assessed the World Bank’s new methodology for estimating the emission reductions resulting from adoption of sustainable agricultural practices.
The new methodology was approved under the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) and is based on the Western Kenya Smallholder Agriculture Carbon Finance project.
A study published in Nature Climate Change this week measured both the biomass of different types of tropical forests and the emissions lost via deforestation, providing more accurate data than was previously available, according to lead author Alessandro Baccini. That’s important for creating confidence in nascent carbon markets.
The lush vegetation wrapping the center of the globe is one of the most important features for regulating a stable climate in the world. Much excess CO2 emissions from industrialized regions find their way to the equator to be absorbed by abundant CO2-consuming plant life. However, as large tracts of tropical rainforest are cut down in the Amazon, Congo, and Southeast Asia, worries have grown that this vital region may turn from a carbon sink to a carbon source. Those worries can be put at ease somewhat thanks to a recent study from the Woods Hole Research Center (WHRC).
The Amazon rainforest is in flux, thanks to agricultural expansion and climate change. In other words, humans have "become important agents of disturbance in the Amazon Basin," as an international consortium of scientists wrote in a review of the state of the science on the world's largest rainforest published in Nature on January 19.
But the precise effect of pine bark beetle plagues on the nitrogen cycle and carbon cycle is highly variable, says a research group led by the University of Idaho, who have used an ecosystem model to simulate outbreaks.
Yesterday they published their findings in the Journal of Geophysical Research.
The Norwegian forestry company Green Resources (GR) is one of several commercial actors that have started planting forests in Africa, aiming to reduce global CO2 emissions and join the international emissions trade market. During my fieldwork in Niassa province in Mozambique, I investigated how one of their plantations, Sanga, socioeconomically affects adjacent local communities.
Recently I travelled to the foothills of Mount Kenya to visit the Meru and Nanyuki Community Reforestation Project, so I and a client could meet the communities benefitting from carbon finance and project developer TIST and see the project first hand.
My abiding takeaways were of industrious and creative farmers collaborating with a view to effect long term change; of the impressive network of local people who were using technology to empower and manage a very broad scheme; and of vastly different ecosystems all within a few kilometres of each other.
The Minister for Climate Change, Cassy O’Connor today announced CO2 Australia Limited as the successful consultant who will carry out groundbreaking research into the carbon stored in Tasmania’s forests.
As UN climate talks loom, the Bank is lobbying G20 countries to resuscitate shrinking carbon markets through controversial measures, including using public climate finance to stimulate demand and creating markets for soil and forest carbon.
