FEATURED NEWS www.wvfa.org Spring 24 | West Virginia Forestry Association Mountain State Forestry 11 The U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities (Endowment) has provided a grant to Dovetail Partners to conduct a project in collaboration with Cambium Consulting over the next year with the goal of creating shared understanding around the potential effects of an expanding forest carbon market in the United States. This project aims to provide elevated awareness, shared knowledge, strengthened connections, and support for critical thinking among key stakeholders regarding the potential for expanding markets for forest carbon offsets that may materially disrupt raw material availability and supply to domestic forest products manufacturing sectors. The desired outcome is to provide space and momentum to spur research, increase understanding of potential downstream impacts, and initiate development of integrated, multi-dimensional strategies for optimizing benefits from natural climate solutions, and buffering or otherwise mitigating potential negative outcomes to communities. You can read more about the project here. The concept paper describing the project, entitled “Exploring the Potential Effects of an Expanding Forest Carbon Market in the United States.” The paper explores the potential effects of an expanding forest carbon market on working forests and the communities that rely on them in the United States. Dovetail Partners, in collaboration with Cambium Consulting, will work to create a shared understanding around the potential effects of an expanding forest carbon market in the United States. The project has four distinct phases designed to raise awareness and encourage consideration and integration of approaches to maximize positive outcomes and minimize negative impacts: development of a concept paper, a survey of stakeholders and interested parties, development of mapping strategies, and a convening workshop to be held in mid-2024. A link to the Dovetail Study website follows: https://www.dovetailinc.org/portfoliodetail. php?id=6584b3231a4f6 Concept Paper Examines Forest Carbon Market Impact on Forest-Dependent Communities and Forest Health forests and the conversion of their forestland to other, perhaps more profitable, uses. It is a mistake to take the future carbon benefits of forest products for granted. Carbon Markets to Support Climate Smart Forestry Climate Smart Forestry is a term that has been introduced to explicitly recognize the multiple climate benefits of forests, including the substitution effect of using wood products (Nabuurs et al. 2017). Unfortunately, we don’t yet have a carbon program for forest landowners that recognizes this holistic approach. But, fortunately, in the voluntary carbon market folks are free to come up with new ways of doing things. We need new carbon programs that include wood products substitution! References Friedlingstein, P. et al. 2023. Global carbon budget 2023, Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 15, 5301– 5369, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-53012023. Forest Trends’ Ecosystem Marketplace. 2023. State of the voluntary carbon markets 2023. Washington DC: Forest Trends Association. McKinley DC et al. 2011. A synthesis of current knowledge on forests and carbon storage in the United States. Ecological applications. 2011 Sep;21(6):1902–24. Nabuurs, GJ et al. 2017. By 2050 the mitigation effects of EU forests could nearly double through climate smart forestry. Forests. Dec 6;8(12):484. Taylor A et al. 2023. Carbon credits for mass timber construction. BioProducts Business 8(1):1– 12. ISSN 2378-1394. https://doi.org/10.22382/ bpb-2023-001. Taylor A et al. 2024. Substitution estimates for wood products in the United States, 1990 to 2020. Forest Products Journal (2023) 73 (4): 362–369. https://doi.org/10.13073/ FPJ-D-23-00036. A U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities’ Grant Funds Research by Dovetail Partners in Collaboration with Cambium Consulting
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