1 FAMILY FORESTS: OUR UNTAPPED CLIMATE SOLUTION

A New Approach to Unlocking the Carbon Potential in America’s Backyard

FAMILY FORESTS: OUR UNTAPPED CLIMATE SOLUTION

2 FAMILY FORESTS: OUR UNTAPPED CLIMATE SOLUTION

As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) revealed, the world must take drastic action over the next 12 years in order to avert the catastrophic consequence of climate change. These changes fall into two broad categories: first, finding ways to rapidly decarbonize the global economy and drastically reduce emissions; and second, investing in tools to sequester and store approximately 1,000 gigatons of carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere. Most of the subsequent discussion of the report has focused on the first category, but the second represents an even more daunting challenge.

As dire as our climate challenge may seem, it’s encouraging to remember that the most effective mechanism for carbon sequestration is already available to us today—in the form of huge carbon sinks currently represented by the trillions of trees in forests across the globe.

Forests still represent one of our most promising natural climate solutions. In fact, the most recent IPCC report highlighted the critical role that sustainable land use—including forestry—plays in tackling climate change.

In the U.S., forests occupy more than 760 million acres and serve as the nation’s largest terrestrial carbon sink, offsetting 11.3% of our country’s annual carbon emissions. In addition, wood products for buildings, homes, furniture and more also continue to store carbon once produced, adding to this sink.

The Natural Climate Solutions Pathway

In the face of this challenge, states, businesses and the conservation community are increasingly realizing the potential of Natural Climate Solutions (NCS) as a mechanism to mitigate climate change. A recent analysis indicates that NCS hold the potential for 37% of needed mitigation globally through 2030 yet currently receives only 0.8% of climate finance.

THE LINK BETWEEN FORESTS AND CLIMATE

Source: The Nature Conservancy

3 FAMILY FORESTS: OUR UNTAPPED CLIMATE SOLUTION

Research by The Nature Conservancy (TNC) shows that one of the greatest opportunities to implement NCS in the U.S. lies in our nation’s working forests, where improved practices could lead to hundreds of millions of additional tons of carbon sequestration. This research shows that improved forest management and reforestation in our nation’s forests represents by far the greatest potential climate mitigation benefit represented by natural climate solutions, and the one most immediately accessible to those decisionmakers committed to taking action on climate change. According to TNC:

Perhaps most important, though, is that many of these natural solutions can be implemented today, and at a relatively low cost compared with other strategies to address global warming. And as carbon markets continue to grow, payments for carbon offsets could offer income for landowners who adopt climate-friendly management strategies.

Natural pathways are just one piece of the puzzle, of course—we’ll also have to accelerate the transition to clean energy and rapidly cut fossil fuel pollution, in the U.S. and around the world. But the U.S. and global studies demonstrate that nature can and must serve as a bridge now to a clean energy future. The bottom line is that we cannot afford to ignore natural solutions for global warming that are available to us now, right beneath our feet.

Source: Science Advances

Climate Mitigation Potential of 21 Natural Climate Solutions in the United States

4 FAMILY FORESTS: OUR UNTAPPED CLIMATE SOLUTION

FAMILY FORESTS: A CRITICAL LINK TO CLIMATE POSITIVE GOALSFamilies and individuals own more of America’s forests than any other ownership type, making them essential for both maintaining and enhancing this important natural carbon sink. These family forest owners hold 38 percent, or 290 million acres, of all the forestland in America. Healthy, well-managed private forests have a critical role to play in sequestering carbon.

In fact, research from the American Forest Foundation shows that family woodlands alone store roughly 14 billion tons of carbon.This means private family forests are already making an essential contribution toward mitigating climate change; however, this contribution must be increased if we are to fight climate change effectively. According to the U.S. Forest Service, managing forests specifically for climate change—with appropriate incentives—could double the amount of carbon sequestered.

Family forests reduce greenhouse gas in the atmosphere by capturing and storing carbon in well-managed forest stands and by providing wood products which both store carbon and avoid carbon emissions when used in place of other more carbon-intensive products. Family forests can also provide a sustainable supply of biomass for energy, which is considered a carbon-neutral energy source by many.

The American Forest Foundation is focused on ensuring that our forests can continue to provide the important benefits we all count on - clean water, clean air, wood supply, wildlife habitat, and carbon storage, by working with family forest owners across the country.

Family Forest Owners Face Increasing Challenges

Our forests face challenges that have worsened in the past few decades. Changing climate, years of drought, and insects and disease threaten the health and resiliency of our forests. On top of this, climate-exacerbated disasters such as catastrophic wildfires and hurricanes are taking away huge tracts of forests that contribute to our carbon sink. It’s estimated that billions of tons of carbon currently stored in family forests are also threatened by development—the conversion of our forestland to other uses such as fields for livestock, housing, commercial development or even parking lots.

In addition to these forest stressors, many landowners experience barriers to action, including financial challenges, that prevent them from being able to address and combat threats to our forests. Most family forest owners aren’t generating regular income from their land, yet they face regular expenses that come with sustainably managing their property with practices that provide additional climate benefits.

The good news is that family forest owners are passionate about caring for the land and want to do the right thing. In order to maintain and even increase natural carbon sequestration in these forests, landowners need help to:

• keep existing family-owned forests as forests, and not converted to non-forest uses• reforest areas that have been deforested or understocked• improve management of existing forests to increase resilience in face of climate-

exacerbated threats such as wildfire, insects, disease

Family forest owners need more information on the resources available to them, they need financial assistance to defray the cost of forest management practices, and they need technical assistance, such as professional guidance from foresters and contractors who can help perform the necessary work.

5 FAMILY FORESTS: OUR UNTAPPED CLIMATE SOLUTION

Markets can help offset costs of many forest management activities. Unfortunately in the U.S. most family forest owners are excluded when it comes to the carbon markets that can encourage these improved practices. The average size of a family ownership (of those with 10+ acres or more) is 67.2 acres. Due to cost and complexity of current carbon markets, these smaller parcels are not addressed.

Without engaging the largest portion of our forests in markets that can offset the costs of forest management, we are shutting out a critical piece of the natural climate solutions necessary to meet climate goals.

If family forest owners are to play this critical role in fighting climate change, we must collaborate to develop and deliver the programs, policies and partnerships to radically increase and encourage—not inhibit—their participation.

Family Forest Owner Spotlight: Susan Benedict, PennsylvaniaSusan’s 2,087 acres has been in her family for three generations. Growing up, Susan spent weekends helping her father care for the land, clearing roads, cutting firewood and taking on other chores. It was fulfilling work, but much of it was done without professional guidance.

When her father passed, Susan met with her forester for advice on managing the property but left the meeting with her head spinning, not realizing the complexities of forestry. She was overwhelmed by the taxes involved and the cost to maintain the her family’s woodlands. She was a working accountant, and her husband recently retired.

To cover costs, Susan continued in her father’s footsteps with thinning different sections of the property each year.

Then the gypsy moth epidemic hit, triggering root rot and destroying what they estimated as $1.2 million worth of timber. When they thinned the forest in the following years, they had to cut more than they wanted to get rid of the dead and diseased trees. This coincided with a decline in timber markets in the area. What used to be five mills dwindled to three, making haul distances longer, trucking costs higher and margins lower.

Susan explored other revenue options and decided to lease a portion of the land to a natural gas pipeline company. She also used federal cost-share programs for her habitat projects.

The supplemental income helped, but wasn’t always enough to pay the taxes let alone pay for manage-ment. Some years they had to put in their own money, which was hard with other competing costs of life, like health insurance. Other years, they simply put projects on hold.

Today, Susan’s forestland is holding steady, but she feels the pressure of keeping her forest as forest—and keeping it healthy for generations to come.

“We want to just let things grow for some time. But no thinning or harvests, means no income. We still have property taxes to pay and year-round maintenance to keep up the wildlife habitat. I think it can be done, it’s just a matter of finding ways to keep the land sustainable and profitable.”

Source: TerraCarbon

6 FAMILY FORESTS: OUR UNTAPPED CLIMATE SOLUTION

To unlock the carbon potential of family forests at the scale and pace necessary to avoid catastrophic warming, we must pursue new approaches to engaging these private landowners and provide additional opportunities for funding this work via market-based solutions.

The Family Forest Carbon Program (FFCP) is a partnership between the American Forest Foundation (AFF), The Nature Conservancy (TNC), leading U.S. businesses, and state and federal agencies to engage America’s 21 million family forest owners in globally significant climate mitigation. The program creates a new pathway for private landowners to access markets, giving them another option to offset forest man-agement costs and generate income from their land.

The Family Forest Carbon Program is designed to be easily accessible to small landowners, removing the barriers landowners often face—access, lack of expertise and cost—to help them manage and optimize their family forests for carbon sequestration. We do this by:

• Adopting a practice-based approach that offers incentives for specific forest management practices which have been scientifically demonstrated to enhance carbon sequestration.

• Engaging family forest owners with trusted information and decades of experience working with private landowners.

• Reducing the expenses to landowners by 75% while creating a path to income. • Offering carbon benefits to businesses and partners to help them reach their sustainable

development goals and demonstrate their leadership on climate issues. The Family Forest Carbon Program makes it economically feasible to engage family lands at a large scale, thus making a significant contribution to the nation’s climate mitigation strategy. According to the initial esimates from the program’s science team, if 20 percent of these family forest acres (54 million) were managed using practices that optimized carbon sequestration by 2030, this program could sequester at least 3.5 gigatons of CO2 through the balance of the century.

How It Works

THE FAMILY FOREST CARBON PROGRAM

FORESTER MEETS WITH LANDOWNER: DISCUSSES GOALS, APPLICABLE CARBON-FRIENDLY MANAGEMENT PRACTICES AND

SELECTS ELIGIBLE PROJECT AREA.

CONTINUED ENGAGEMENT AND LONG-TERM

RELATIONSHIP

FFCP REPRESENTATIVE VERIFIES THE COMPLETION

OF PRACTICE.

LANDOWNER RECEIVES AND SIGNS CONTRACT,

RANGING FROM 1-20 YEARS DEPENDING ON

PRACTICE.

LANDOWNER HIRES CONSULTING FORESTER TO PLAN FOR AND COMPLETE

PRACTICE. 

CARBON AND OTHER BENEFITS ARE QUANTIFIED ON A LANDSCAPE SCALE

THROUGH FULL MONITORING ON A RANDOM SAMPLE OF

PARCELS.

After learning about program benefits and

verifying eligibility with FFCP representative, landowner

signs up to participate.

FAMILY FOREST CARBON PROGRAM (FFCP):

HOW IT WORKS

FFCP PAYS LANDOWNER FIRST

INSTALLMENT TO COMPLETE THE

PRACTICE.

CO2

LANDOWNER COMPLETES SIMPLE

MONITORING REQUIREMENTS AND IS

PAID INSTALLMENTS THROUGHOUT

CONTRACT PERIOD.

7 FAMILY FORESTS: OUR UNTAPPED CLIMATE SOLUTION

AFF, TNC and local partners are launching the Family Forest Carbon Program in select regions in 2019, with an eye toward expanding the program in other areas of the country. Eligible landowners will work with professional foresters to implement one or more practices designed to improve forest health while increasing the carbon sequestration potential of their individual property. These practices are consistent with forest management needs in each region and also work to improve wildlife habitat, reduce wildfire risk, minimize soil erosion, and support long-term sustainability of forest product markets.

Family forest landowners receive financial incentives to implement science-based sustainable forest management practices on their properties, based on a model of the expected carbon value yielded.

Because FFCP is designed to monitor practices, which are relatively easy and inexpensive to monitor, as opposed to carbon on each forest parcel, which is resource intensive to monitor, the program reduces the transaction costs of these projects by at least 75%. The program is designed to produce valid and scientifically defensible claims across a known acreage, resulting in sequestration reportable in tons.

Using scientific literature and data on the carbon impact of these practices, we will accurately model the carbon impacts of the practices at a landscape scale. Results are verified through a random sampling of properties, using full, on-the-ground monitoring. This auditing process provides the added benefit of improving the modeling over time.

This ensures both that FFCP will generate an accurate estimate of the additional carbon sequestration produced by the program, and that the costs of monitoring and verification are low enough to allow landowners who own smaller parcel to participate. The additional carbon produced by the program is then brought to the market in the form of verified carbon credits that can be used by companies and other organizations to meet their carbon commitments and reach their sustainable development goals.

By tapping into NCS at the scale that will be needed over the next decade and beyond, The Family Forest Carbon Program offers a new and additional avenue for us to work together to unleash globally significant climate mitigation through America’s family forests.

According to Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) Inger Andersen:

The bottom line is that we cannot limit warming to 1.5°C (or 2°C for that matter) without natural climate solutions. Nature-based solutions have the potential to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by 12 gigatons each year. This is roughly equal to emissions from all the world’s coal fired plants. At the same time, it is important to keep in mind, firstly, that increasing ambition requires us to commit simultaneously to an energy transition and greater investments in nature. And secondly, if we don’t act on nature now, then nature’s ability to protect humanity will diminish even more. So, nature is on the table as a solution to climate action, but only just and we have to seize the moment. The good news is nature is forgiving and it’s time we gave it the chance it deserves.

Source: UN.org

8 FAMILY FORESTS: OUR UNTAPPED CLIMATE SOLUTION

FAMILY FORESTS: A PATH TO MEETING OUR CLIMATE GOALSWe must keep our forests healthy if we are going to meet our goals for mitigating climate change, and America’s family forest owners are ready to be part of the solution.

This means NCS and the carbon potential of family-owned forests need to be part of the climate conversation. From companies investing in carbon credits to meet their sustainable development goals to agencies and governments creating the right policies and programs, it will take a cross-sector approach to adequately maintain and increase the carbon stocks available to us in family forests.

Family forests and forest products that come from them provide an immediate and cost-effective method to reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. This is a proven, natural solution that can be put to work immediately and implemented through well-established forest management techniques. It buys the time we desperately need to make the long-term technological shifts to a low-carbon economy. We urge you to join us in supporting efforts to engage America’s woodland owners so we can invest in creating healthier forests and increase our carbon sequestration potential. Mitigating climate change will take strong partnerships and a collective effort to be successful.

To learn more and discover how you can get involved, visit:

http://www.forestfoundation.org/carbon

The American Forest Foundation (AFF) is a forest conservation organization working on the ground with families, partners and elected officials to promote stewardship and keep our forests healthy and producing clean water and air, wildlife habitat and sustainable wood supplies. Our vision is to move 200,000 landowners to action over the next 15 years optimizing this critical portion of our nation’s forests for biodiversity, critical water supply, catastrophic wildfire mitigation and natural carbon sequestration.