VIDEO: Creating Value for Healthy Forests
Follow SCS as we verify a carbon offset project
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Since 2008, SCS Global Services has conducted hundreds of assessments of carbon offset projects around the world. Our role is to conduct independent audits and inspections to ensure that offset projects comply with standards and accomplish their carbon sequestration goals.
Third-party verification is a prerequisite for the sale or trade of credits on carbon markets. Carbon offsets and Cap and Trade programs incentivize companies to reduce their emissions, and give landowners investment resources to continue their sustainable forestry practices.
“Prior to carbon offset projects, the majority of ways to generate revenues from the forests were to cut the trees and send them to the mill, or to cut all the trees and convert the forest to something other than forestland,” says SCS Forester Francis Eaton.
“This way, we still get to enjoy the forest, and the forest gets to perform its role: sequestering carbon from the atmosphere and providing oxygen for us to breathe.”
In this video, we follow Francis at an offset project in Northern California as he evaluates the amount of carbon being sequestered in a 9,000-acre property.
Carbon offset projects help safeguard forests, protect wildlife, provide economic benefits to communities, and advance global climate objectives. Worldwide, nearly 300 billion tons of carbon are being sequestered in the planet’s forests, although only a fraction of that amount is verified and available for trading on mandatory and voluntary carbon markets.
Over 10 years, the McCloud River Forest Project has increased its carbon dioxide sequestration by over 450,000 metric tons. That additional amount offsets the energy consumption of 50,000 homes for an entire year. The timberland is managed by Campbell Global and is registered under the Climate Action Reserve as an Improved Forest Management Project with the help of Bluesource, a carbon offset project developer.
Visit our Forest and Land-Use Carbon Offset Verification page to learn more about how projects like this one provide reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
