Forests, forest management and climate change – understanding the existing forest offset market and its connection to practical forest management in the United States

Land management interventions such as forest management have gained significant traction in the last few years as instruments in increasing carbon sequestration in working lands of the United States. Indeed, storing carbon in forests has been identified as a key nature-based solution pathway. While the importance of forest management in maintaining and potentially enhancing the terrestrial carbon sinks has been well established, carbon as a management objective in the practical context of silviculture and forest management is a relatively new concept. Yet a new emissions trading market, the Voluntary Carbon Offset Market in California, has been dominated by offsets originating from managed forests. Furthermore, almost two hundred million forest carbon offsets have been issued through the California Cap-and-Trade Program and Voluntary Offset Market, yet little information is available on the practical forest management applied in these projects. Finally, in 2021, California passed Senate Bill (SB-155) allocating $2.5 billion in state funding for forest resilience and wildfire prevention, but as of now, lacks a universal framework for transparently assessing the carbon benefits (i.e., additionality) claimed by forest carbon offset projects.

Within the offset markets context, improved forest management (IFM) has been identified as one of the forestry-related land management pathways with significant climate change mitigation potential. Currently, IFM is loosely defined and how it translates into practical forestry and connects to sustainable forest management (i.e., best management practices) as a whole has not been identified in detail. Our novel analysis of the offset market in California reveals that while improved forest management is the most credited project type in the California market, existing projects vary to a great degree in their disclosure about the planned or completed forest management activities for the project area. Our research has found several gaps and research and policy needs—particularly related to forest practices considered improved forest management, forest carbon offset additionality and permanence—and finally, highlights a pressing need for policy instruments to support and oversee these efforts.