Several of us in New England have been looking at the possibilities of small forest landowners (and even urban treeplanting projects) being able to receive carbon offset credits for certain forest management and treeplanting practices. The current Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) protocol only allows for afforestation projects….the New England states are heavily forested and therefore afforestation carbon credits have little utility.
A recent study by the Manomet Center in Maine and another study at the Harvard Forest both suggest that specific forest management practices could provide significant carbon sequestration….but caution that proper accounting protocols are critical to manage the issues of additionality and leakage.
Other conversations have also centered around the possible benefits of measuring other ecosystem services in terms of their carbon impacts…therefore creating a common currency for an entire set of ecosystem service benefits.
One of our colleagues, Kate Kilguss, is authoring a white paper that provides the basis to consider changes to the RGGI carbon offset protocol as well as explores how forest management (and soil management) carbon offsets might benefit New England farm and forest landowners.
Richard Pace 
“Other conversations have also centered around the possible benefits of measuring other ecosystem services in terms of their carbon impacts…therefore creating a common currency for an entire set of ecosystem service benefits.” Would like to see this approach explored. Currently, land development companies are buying up thousands of ecologically important forest lands that are rural/cheap–these forests important to maintain stream/river/bay health/temperature, wildlife corridors, rainfall patterns, oxygen production, and carbon sequestration. Frequently, land dev companies timber these forest in preparation for development–somewhere between a ‘select’ cut and a clear-cut, frequently on steep slopes which damage the streams below. Then, non-green homes / structures are put on the land. Hence we lose the multiple benefits of forests. Then, somewhere else in country, utilities or other ‘carbon offset’ entites pay to ‘re-forest ‘a parcel already converted/degraded. Doesn’t make sense. Why can’t we come up w/ a easy, national development rights transfer program that helps land development companies re-coup their initial land purchase costs, move the development rights to interior urban parcels, and not have to go thru the forest loss to begin with. If forests and grasslands are truly providing public benefits by stabilizing planetary processes and fish/wildilfe/plant communties, then we need to recognize that through some form of compensation that takes into consideration what the timbering profit would be, what the base structure development profit would be. Cost-benefit analysis, when incorporating all other eco-benefits of saving existing forests, would seem to point to this being economically cheaper to prevent de-forestation. If we must fix climate change faster, we must think outside the box and expand our inclusion of other public benefits received when we conserve ‘natural capital.’
LikeLike