Deforestation and degradation are major sources of global carbon emissions. Ending them could prevent up to 5.8 billion tonnes of carbon emissions a year, roughly the same as the annual emissions of the United States. But that depends on the projects protecting these forests having reliable, long-term finance.
For decades, that finance has relied on methodologies that couldn’t demonstrate what projects were actually achieving. Every avoided deforestation certificate is based on an estimate of how much forest would have been lost without the project. Legacy methodologies built those estimates on projections from historical data, fixed years in advance, rather than comparing projects against real-world control areas. When some estimates proved too high, buyers lost confidence in the whole pathway, including high quality projects that were delivering real conservation.
That has left a lot of project developers in a difficult position. Many have spent years working with local communities to protect forests, but haven’t had a way to demonstrate their work that buyers trust.
Over the last two years, Isometric has developed seven nature-based protocols, from Reforestation and Mangrove Restoration to Improved Soil Management and Agroforestry, and we now work with more than 30 project developers worldwide. Helping Mombak deliver the first certificates to the Symbiosis Coalition two years ahead of schedule showed that scientific rigor and speed can work together in nature-based projects.
Since then, buyers and project developers have been asking whether we could bring the same approach to avoided deforestation. Our Science Team has spent months working out how to certify the pathway accurately. They spoke with academics and with conservationists working on the ground, and looked closely at the gaps in legacy methodologies that made it hardest for projects to prove their impact.
Our protocol hinges on three innovations in how avoided deforestation is certified. Baselines will be set against real-world control areas and updated over time, so certificates can’t be issued against outdated forecasts of deforestation risk. Every project will start from an assumption of 100% leakage. The economic and social drivers of deforestation will also be built into the calculation, and projects will need to demonstrate they’ve addressed them with local communities before any certificates are issued. Developers will only be able to reduce the leakage assumption by showing that the crops, fuelwood, and timber the forest would have supplied are being produced or replaced without clearing forest elsewhere.
Entering a market with a new approach, where legacy methodologies have dominated for decades, isn’t without risk. But we believe that this is the way to restore trust in avoided deforestation. We’ve been encouraged that many in the industry agree, from academics like Dr. Tom Swinfield, who chairs the Scientific Council of Haven, and Prof. Ed Mitchard at Space Intelligence, to project developers that have already put their faith in us, including Revalue and Imperative.
Our avoided deforestation protocol will enter public consultation in the next few weeks. We’d like to hear from developers, buyers, scientists, and the communities who live alongside these forests, so that the final protocol works for everyone involved in protecting them.
