The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has sent a clear message: to keep catastrophic climate change impacts at bay, we need to keep our warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius, and the land sector must play a central role in achieving that. We need to stop emissions from deforestation and forest degradation while simultaneously bolstering the carbon sequestration capacity of healthy, growing forests.

Following the recent U.S. presidential election, the Forest-Climate Working Group (FCWG) released an ambitious federal policy platform, endorsed by 43 CEOs and organizations representing all dimensions of U.S. forests, intended to help Congress leverage forests for climate change action. The platform includes five detailed proposals that guide policymakers on how to help private forest owners and public land managers overcome existing financial and technical obstacles, enabling them to grow powerful climate solutions in America’s forests and forest product sectors while delivering myriad environmental and economic benefits.

Together, the proposals advance the four FCWG goals for climate change mitigation:

  • Maintain and expand forest cover.
  • Improve forest practices for carbon, adaptation and resilience.
  • Advance markets for forest carbon, forest products and skilled labor.
  • Enhance climate data and applied science.

With the following specific proposals, the FCWG aims to address the aforementioned challenges and, in so doing, increase the climate change mitigation potential from forests and forest products:

  • Create a new forest conservation easement program.
  • Create a landowner tax credit for private forest carbon actions.
  • Remove the cap on the Reforestation Trust Fund.
  • Create a low carbon footprint building tax credit.
  • Expand Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) Program funding.

Read the full article about big forest and climate by Kylie Clay at GreenBiz.