Forest Trends

Patricia Derocher, COO, AlterEcho

For decades, the environmental community has known that deforestation is a major threat to ecosystems across the globe, and an existential concern for many of them. According to estimates from the UN, some 25 million acres—an area roughly equivalent to the state of Kentucky—experience deforestation.¹ The carbon impacts of deforestation are twofold and compounding: Not only does the act of deforestation release large amounts of carbon, but it also removes an enormous carbon sink, hobbling the planet’s ability to clear greenhouse gases by its own natural processes.²

While some deforested areas are replanted, these new forests simply cannot replace their predecessors on the timescale needed to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. To begin with, most replanted forests consist of only a handful of tree species, and thus represent a stunning loss of biodiversity in spite of their planters’ best efforts.³ The forests that are being cleared across the world have been developing for millennia, and host an irreplaceable array of plant, animal, and fungus species that simply cannot be replaced overnight, or even replicated over the course of a few decades. In northern Canada, for example, the boreal forests form a complex ecosystem that is home to lichens and mosses that sustain local caribou populations, which in turn have provided food, clothing, and a cultural grounding to Canada’s First Peoples for centuries.⁴ Further, the Canadian boreal forest has more carbon sequestered in its soil, slow-decomposing peat stores, trees, and permafrost than in every active oil, gas, and coal reserve in the world.⁵ As if this wasn’t enough, deforestation leads to soil erosion, which increases the frequency and severity of flooding, an increase in prevalence of zoonotic diseases, and contributes to the endangerment of drinking water supplies.⁶

So why has it proven so difficult to address deforestation? The answer, in a word, is incentives. In addition to the profit motive and need for return on shareholder investment that drive most of the entities engaging in deforestation, the tragic fact remains that, in much of the world, the communities where deforestation is taking place lack viable alternatives, depending upon the revenue from deforestation activities to survive in an increasingly globalized economy.⁷ In 2016, the UN set up its REDD+ program, which aims to connect grassroots and government stakeholders in tropical regions with one another and with sources of financing and other support in order to incentivize forest preservation.⁸

One organization working alongside the UN and its partner governments and organizations is Forest Trends, a Washington, DC-based NGO that seeks to realign the financial incentives associated with deforestation so as to protect forested areas, uplift local communities, and ensure equitable and sustainable solutions to the problems associated with deforestation.⁹ Forest Trends, founded in 1996, has partnered with the REDD+ program since the latter’s inception, leading to the offset of billions of tons of carbon dioxide.¹⁰ The pitfalls of traditional carbon credits are wellknown. They often rely on opaque math and assumptions, making it difficult for outside observers and auditors to verify their efficacy. Worse, many carbon offsets are achieved by the planting of new-growth replacement forests that lack the biodiversity and resiliency of old-growth forests; in some cases, such as the Quebec forest fires of summer 2023, these forests have been at the heart of devastating fire events, releasing enormous amounts of carbon, destroying thousands of acres, and degrading air quality across North America.¹¹ Flipping this model on its head, Forest Trends has created a marketplace for carbon credits that allows companies to purchase offsets based on the actual, known carbon capture associated with preexisting forests.¹² In a related initiative, Forest Trends has recently proposed a novel solution to carbon credit permanence, in partnership with the American Forest Foundation. The core problem with any offset program is durability—i.e., whether the carbon or other negative externality that is avoided or diverted actually stays averted, and does not need to be offset again or accounted for in the future. While the traditional approach suggests reserving a number of credits for this eventual impermanence, based on good-faith estimates, Forest Trends and AFF are suggesting alternatively that credit marketplaces set aside the funds from all credits in a carefully managed and monitored fund, assumed to grow with interest, to maintain offsets in perpetuity.¹³

Forest Trends is also on the forefront of ensuring sustainable governance of forest preservation on all levels of engagement. Working with major corporations and governments, the NGO has committed to improving supply chains across the world. While this involves cooperation with major consumers of wood, such as furniture and paper products manufacturers, it also requires buy-in and engagement from the agricultural sector, which accounts for as much 70 percent of deforestation in some countries.¹⁴ Your beef, in other words, needs to be as ecologically sound as your bookcases, and Forest Trends is on the job. Recognizing that governments need to be engaged and incentivized to enforce anti-deforestation policies, Forest Trends has facilitated dialogue between public and private actors to that end.¹⁵ Impressively, the organization has helped governments and companies navigate the complexities of protecting forests amid the coup d’etat and ensuing conflict that have gripped Myanmar since early 2021.¹⁶ Finally, but no less important, Forest Trends has partnered with GreenData, a Brazilian environmental NGO, to provide Indigenous and other local communities with information and resources on carbon offset markets and other means of participating in forest preservation.¹⁷ In doing so, Forest Trends is working to ensure that traditional stewards of the world’s forests are part of the conversation in protecting those forests for future generations, while also directly benefiting from market-based solutions.

The challenges of deforestation have existed for centuries, and show no signs of abating. Nevertheless, organizations like Forest Trends and its partners across the globe give us reason for hope. By approaching the problem with an open mind, engaging all stakeholders, and finding creative solutions out of traditional market-based approaches, progress has occurred and remains possible with respect to this complex issue.

Forest Trends

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