UBC Undergraduate Research

Comparitive Analysis of Tree Canada’s Afforestation and Reforestation Standard and BC’s draft Forest Offset Protocol Doyon, Erika

Abstract

If the future of the forest industry lies partially in taking advantage of the emerging carbon market, the creation of credible forest-offsets must be guaranteed. As a biological sink and source, BC forests are subject to high variability. Success in generating real, additional, permanent and verifiable credits is largely dependent on the robustness of the protocol to address forest variability issues. Two recent protocols in Canada include the Tree Canada Afforestation and Reforestation Standard and the BC draft Forest Offset Protocol. The ease in which these protocols direct project implementation is determined by the methodologies adopted to address the key elements, such as permanence, leakage and quantification. The level to which the two protocols satisfy widely recognized ISO principles determines the level of fair GHG accounting achieved. BC’s draft Protocol lacks comprehensiveness compared to Tree Canada’s protocol, which has fulfilled the ISO principles to a greater degree.

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Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International