Abstract:
The voluntary carbon market is an important near-term opportunity for funding nature-based climate solutions. It is shrinking just as states of the Amazon are preparing to sell large volumes of a new type of high-integrity forest carbon credit from jurisdictional REDD+ (J-REDD+) programs to provide essential funding for their forest strategies. These strategies could reduce net emissions of Amazon forest carbon by 5% of the current global total, driving far more emissions reductions than credits issued. Fossil fuel producers and other big GHG emitters could rapidly increase demand through the purchase and retirement of J-REDD+ credits through a polluter pay mechanism. J-REDD+ could also enhance the effectiveness of agricultural commodity market strategies for protecting forests, beginning with China.
Biography
Dan Nepstad, President and Founder of Earth Innovation Institute, has worked in the Brazilian Amazon for 40 years studying the ecological processes, frontier dynamics, public policies, and market initiatives that are shaping the region. Beginning in 2010, Earth Innovation has developed and implemented in Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia and Peru the “jurisdictional approach” to forest-positive, socially-inclusive development in tropical forest regions. He was previously Senior Scientist at Woods Hole Research Center, Chief Program Officer of Environmental Conservation at the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and a Lecturer at Yale University. Dan co-founded the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM) in 1995, Aliança da Terra in 2004, and was a founding board member of the Round Table for Responsible Soy (RTRS) in 2005 and INOBU (Indonesia) in 2015. He was a Lead Author of IPCC 5th Assessment (WG2, Ch 4) and holds a PhD in Forest Ecology from Yale University.
The Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery and Biodiversity Network are interested in promoting a wide variety of views and opinions on nature recovery from researchers and practitioners.
The views, opinions and positions expressed within this lecture are those of the author alone, they do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery/Biodiversity Network, or its researchers.
