Amid growing investor interest in forest-based climate mitigation, including forest carbon credits and benefits through reducing greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+), challenging questions have emerged in recent debates, and must be adequately addressed, experts say.
Forest conservation is a key tool for climate change mitigation, but integrity issues with forest carbon offsets – such as inflated reference levels – need to be addressed in order to maintain the integrity of, and support for, forest-based climate solutions, said scientists in the 9 May session of the Global Forest Observations Initiative (GFOI) Plenary 2023. The side event aimed to address potential pitfalls, mainly by looking at lessons from CIFOR-ICRAF’s long-term Global Comparative Study on REDD+ (2009-2023), involving some 14 years of research across 22 countries.
Accurate and transparent measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) of emissions is a vital part of the forest carbon market; however, too few rigorous assessments of REDD+ effectiveness are available, said Pham Thu Thuy, senior scientist leading the climate change, energy and low-carbon development team with the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and World Agroforestry (ICRAF).