As part of our Watershed Innovation program, NNRG aims to provide access and market development for small forest landowners in Washington and Oregon to allow them access to emerging markets for carbon sequestration in addition to their existing access to markets for sustainable wood products.  Working through all levels of the supply chain, NNRG is endeavoring to apply existing research and models to develop protocols for determining carbon sequestration on land certified as sustainably managed by the Forest Stewardship Council and the additionality of this sequestration over traditional management practices (State required minimums).  This additionality can then be packaged into marketable verifiable carbon offsets for sale in voluntary or regulatory markets. 

Given the abundance of private forestlands in the Pacific Northwest and the exceptional potential of those forestlands to serve as carbon sinks, it is important that the emerging carbon sequestration offset market contain forestry protocols and recognize the contributions of our many small private landowners. We are working to create specific mechanisms through which small forest landowners can benefit and participate in these markets.  NCF’s group certification program is uniquely poised to serve as the basis for providing a third-party verified means of ensuring the contribution by small landowners to carbon uptake.

FSC certification provides an already-existing, trusted, third-party certification system through which forestry can rapidly be established as a source of carbon offsets, thereby hastening the process and decreasing costs for landowners.  There are several aspects of FSC certification that already guarantee additional carbon uptake over mainstream forest management practices; these include longer average rotation ages, larger volumes of standing live and dead trees, as well as larger volumes of lying dead biomass.  NNRG is working with SmartWood, a leading FSC certifier, to develop formal monitoring and verification criteria for carbon sequestration coupling them with FSC Pacific Coast Standard and helping to establish baseline characterizations above which forest landowners can design their projects and practices.

NNRG and our partners are working through a variety of outreach methods to recruit landowners into the program and assist them with the development of long term management plans and meeting certification requirements.  NNRG is also developing methods of aggregating the carbon offsets and sustainable wood streams produced by participating landowners to allow them to access larger scale markets at premium prices.  Our work also continues with regional and State decision makers to develop carbon registries in advance of regulatory requirements and to build a regional carbon market, compatible with developing markets in other states.  The ability of landowners to access the emerging market for carbon sequestration services (and other ecosystem services) will contribute to their ability to remain financially stable while sustainably managing their forestlands, keeping this land as part of a functioning ecosystem and encouraging practices that lead to greater carbon sequestration and therefore improved health of earth’s atmosphere.