This weekend, I had the amazing opportunity to visit the world's biggest trees: the giant sequoias of #California. The General Sherman - the largest tree (by volume) in the world - has been a formidable carbon storehouse, holding more than 300 tonnes of carbon for over 2,200 years. That's in a single tree! đ¤Ż
A few facts to get us started:
đą On average, a mature tree can absorb around 48kg of carbon/year and will sequester around 1 ton of carbon over its lifetime.
đ Globally, forests are estimated to store about 296 gigatons of carbon. That's more than 8x what humanity emits per year!
đĽ Deforestation and forest degradation contribute to 15% of all greenhouse gas emissions.
đŤ The world loses around 10 million hectares of forest anually, equivalent to 27,000 hectares per day or 20 football fields per minute.
đĄď¸ Only about 15% of the world's forests are formally protected through national parks, nature reserves, and other conservation areas.
đĄ Punch line: To fight climate change, we need to protect our forests. And frankly, we are simply not doing enough.
I firmly believe that, despite their shortcomings and critiques, carbon credits should play a role in helping us preserve our forests. Why? It's the best tool we've got. đź
đď¸ Governments will play a central role, but they alone can't unlock the capital needed at the scale and speed required. We haven't found any other way besides carbon credits to put a commercial value on a tree, and we desperately need to channel billions, even trillions, to preserving our nature over the coming decades.
đ So, let's not write off using carbon credits to protect our forests. What we need are high-quality credits that actually deliver on their promise. I believe we can achieve this, especially with the advances in monitoring, reporting, and verification (#MRV) I'm seeing in the space. It's time to get to work and look after our forests, one tree at a time. đłđ
đ¤ Do you agree? Have you seen better approaches? What needs to be done?
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