29/07/2022
Carbon sequestering bonds are a good tool and incentive for organizations to come up with ways to help the environment; it gives them a financial incentive to take action and invest in lowering the Co2 pollution. It has become “good business” to obtain Co2 sequestering bonds and this is a fantastic development. In order to qualify, a project must show that they make a real difference. This begins with looking at the “zero action” baseline which is the scenario in which no action is taken (and the amount of Co2 captured is calculated). The “action scenario” then will show how much Co2 is captured by a project if the project indeed takes place. It is the difference between the 2 scenarios in sequestering Co2 that counts. This makes perfect sense of course. But there is a big flaw in reasoning when it comes to protecting forest. Organizations like ours buy up existing, endangered, forest and we change the land into (private) nature reserves. We change the legal status under which that land is registered so that this land then becomes an officially protected area; by law of the land. We, as an organization, watch over this land and we now have made sure that the law is on our side and no more poaching and cutting down trees takes place.
We currently cannot generate funds from Co2 bonds because the “zero action” baseline assumes that the forest that is there captures Co2 and if no action is taken the same forest will be there and will capture the same Co2. Sadly, this is a very flawed reasoning because -simply because the land in question is forest today- does not guaranty at all that it is not cut down and deforested tomorrow. In 2021 the tropics lost 11.1 million hectares of forest (according to a study by University of Maryland) and we all know that, unfortunately, worldwide much more forest is cut down then is re-planted and that -if nothing is done to reverse the trend- the point of no return will soon be reached. So, as far as we are concerned and one of the main reasons, we do what we do is that we believe that the “zero action scenario” is actually a scenario in which the forest that is forest today will be cut in the foreseeable future. Therefore, our action does make a difference in our opinion. It would be a very big help if the international community that regulates Co2 sequestering bonds would face reality and would credit the creation of nature reserves as deserved. Much more land would be protected and we will simply have to start protecting what is left because at the rate forest is cut today it is simply not realistic to think that we can reverse this process by reforestation only.
