Optimizing sequestered carbon in forest offset programs: balancing accounting stringency and participation

Abstract

Background:
Although there is broad agreement that negative carbon emissions may be required in order to meet the global climate change targets specified in the Paris Agreement and that carbon sequestration in the terrestrial biosphere can be an important contributor, there are important accounting issues that often discourage forest carbon sequestration projects. The legislation establishing the California forest offset program, for example, requires that offsets be "real, additional, quantifiable, permanent, verifiable, and enforceable". While these are all clearly desirable attributes, their implementation has been a great challenge in balancing complexity, expense, and risk. Most forest offset protocols carry similar accounting objectives, but often with different details, (e.g. Richards and Huebner in Carbon Manag 3(4):393-410, 2012 and Galik et al. in Mitig Adapt Strateg Glob Change 14:677-690, 2009). The result is that the complexity, expense, and risk of participation discourage participation and make it more difficult to achieve climate mitigation goals. We focus on the requirements for accounting and permanence to illustrate that current requirements disproportionately disadvantage small landowners.

Results:
The simplified 1040EZ filing system for U.S. income taxes may provide insight for a protocol model that balances reward, effort, and risk, while still achieving the overall objectives of standardized offset protocols. In this paper, we present initial ideas and lay the groundwork behind a "2050EZ" protocol for forest carbon sequestration as a complement to existing protocols.

Conclusion:
The Paris Agreement states that "Parties should take action to conserve and enhance, as appropriate, sinks and reservoirs of greenhouse gases." The Paris Agreement also refers to issues such as equity, sustainable development, and other non-carbon benefits. The challenge is to provide incentives for maintaining and increasing the amount of carbon sequestered in the biosphere. Monitoring and verification of carbon storage need to be sufficient to demonstrate sequestration from the atmosphere while providing clear incentives and simple accounting approaches that encourage participation by diverse participants, including small land holders.

Full text

Wiseetal. Carbon Balance Manage (2019) 14:16
https://doi.org/10.1186/s13021-019-0131-y
RESEARCH
Optimizing sequestered carbon inforest
oset programs: balancing accounting
stringency andparticipation
Lindsey Wise1, Eric Marland1* , Gregg Marland2, Jason Hoyle3, Tamara Kowalczyk4, Tatyana Ruseva5,
Jeffrey Colby6 and Timothy Kinlaw6
Abstract
Background: Although there is broad agreement that negative carbon emissions may be required in order to meet
the global climate change targets specified in the Paris Agreement and that carbon sequestration in the terrestrial
biosphere can be an important contributor, there are important accounting issues that often discourage forest car-
bon sequestration projects. The legislation establishing the California forest offset program, for example, requires that
offsets be “real, additional, quantifiable, permanent, verifiable, and enforceable”. While these are all clearly desirable
attributes, their implementation has been a great challenge in balancing complexity, expense, and risk. Most forest
offset protocols carry similar accounting objectives, but often with different details, (e.g. Richards and Huebner in
Carbon Manag 3(4):393–410, 2012 and Galik et al. in Mitig Adapt Strateg Glob Change 14:677–690, 2009). The result is
that the complexity, expense, and risk of participation discourage participation and make it more difficult to achieve
climate mitigation goals. We focus on the requirements for accounting and permanence to illustrate that current
requirements disproportionately disadvantage small landowners.
Results: The simplified 1040EZ filing system for U.S. income taxes may provide insight for a protocol model that
balances reward, effort, and risk, while still achieving the overall objectives of standardized offset protocols. In this
paper, we present initial ideas and lay the groundwork behind a “2050EZ” protocol for forest carbon sequestration as a
complement to existing protocols.
Conclusion: The Paris Agreement states that “Parties should take action to conserve and enhance, as appropri-
ate, sinks and reservoirs of greenhouse gases.” The Paris Agreement also refers to issues such as equity, sustainable
development, and other non-carbon benefits. The challenge is to provide incentives for maintaining and increasing
the amount of carbon sequestered in the biosphere. Monitoring and verification of carbon storage need to be suf-
ficient to demonstrate sequestration from the atmosphere while providing clear incentives and simple accounting
approaches that encourage participation by diverse participants, including small land holders.
Keywords: Carbon accounting, Forest offset, Sequestration program
© The Author(s) 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
(http://creat iveco mmons .org/licen ses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,
provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license,
and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/
publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
Open Access
Carbon Balance and Management
*Correspondence: marlandes@appstate.edu
1 Department of Mathematical Sciences, Appalachian State University,
Boone, USA
Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
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Background
The role offorest carbon sequestration
As we continue to struggle toward meeting a 2°C (or less)
limit for raising global average temperature [1, 2], there
is wide agreement that the only avenue to success is to
include negative CO2 emissions strategies [1, 3, 4]. Sim-
ply reducing emissions is likely not enough. One of the
most effective ways to achieve negative emissions is by
sequestering carbon in the terrestrial biosphere (includ-
ing soils), and then increasing the time it takes for that
carbon to make its way back to the atmosphere. is can
be achieved in a variety of ways, from reforesting land
currently without trees, to increasing the growth of exist-
ing forests and preserving forest land likely to be cleared,
to increasing the mean lifetime of harvested wood prod-
ucts. While carbon sequestration represents negative
emissions it is often presented in the mitigation literature
as offering offsets while existing positive emissions are
reduced.
While not without risks and uncertainties, reforesting,
improving forest management, protecting forests, and
increasing the life of harvested wood products increase
the overall stock of carbon pulled out, and kept out, of
the atmosphere.
If enough carbon is going to be stored in forests around
the globe in time to keep warming levels to the 2° tar-
get, this needs to be initiated soon and on a large scale
(e.g. [5]). At the same time, it takes time for a cultural
shift to take place, and gaining the needed support from
landholders where carbon can be sequestered is impor-
tant. Incentives can be offered to increase participation
by making it more appealing to grow or maintain forests.
Understanding the motives and objectives of landowners
can give us insight into constructing incentives that will
work for a variety of different motivations, motivations
that vary by country, by region, or even within regions by
the size of landholdings and the demographic character-
istics of landowners (e.g. [6, 7]). Land ownership varies
from countries where essentially all forest land is publicly
owned (e.g. Russia and ailand) to countries where the
dominant control over forest land is by private owners
(e.g. 58% private in the U.S. and 75% private in Sweden
in 2010) [8].
Incentives andosets
e Paris Agreement [2], now signed by 195 Parties
and ratified by 183 (as of 5 April, 2019), cites the need
to pursue actions for carbon sequestration and encour-
ages incentives for sequestration activities [9, 10]. e
Agreement does not specify a method or an accounting
approach, leaving these open to discussion and further
specification.
Current strategies include the ideas of carbon taxes,
cap-and-trade systems, carbon offset markets, and small
scale investing in urban forests, among other activities.
ere has even been the suggestion of; growing trees to
bury in the ground where they cannot oxidize back to the
atmosphere (e.g. [11]).
Working toward increasing negative CO2 emissions,
some accounting issues present challenges to broad par-
ticipation in current programs. While we focus this dis-
cussion on the details of the California [12] program,
many programs for reducing carbon emissions attempt
to supplement these reduction efforts with sequestration
“offsets” (i.e. negative emissions), but then have to deal
with the question of the numerical equivalence of emis-
sions reductions and offsets. With reductions for uncer-
tainty, leakage, reversion risk, and land value (avoided
conversion), offsets earned are not the numerical equiv-
alent of tons of carbon sequestered, making a compari-
son to emissions debatable. In an attempt to prevent
loopholes and clarify procedures, offset programs can
make participation subject to stringent requirements and
detailed reporting that make offsets only economically
viable to a limited set of landholders, or appealing only
to the altruistic. Kerchner and Keeton [13] estimate that
the California forest offset program, for example, is not
financially viable for projects less than about 600ha.
e legislation establishing the California for-
est offset program [12] requires that offsets be “real,
additional, quantifiable, permanent, verifiable, and
enforceable”. While these are all clearly desirable attrib-
utes, their implementation has been a great challenge in
balancing complexity, expense, and commitment. Par-
ticipation in this program is low relative to the number
of potential participants [14]. Accounting also encoun-
ters issues of leakage since only broad participation in
a closed system can insure against sequestration in one
area being negated by a responsive emission elsewhere.
Carbon incentives for the land sector can be struc-
tured in different ways. (1) Practice-based payments
provide funding to support a variety of conserva-
tion programs, or (2) Pay-for-performance programs
wherein landowners are compensated on the basis of
how much carbon they actually sequester, in some
cases generating tradable carbon credits. e Paris
Agreement states simply that “Parties should take
action to conserve and enhance, as appropriate, sinks
and reservoirs of greenhouse gases” [2, Article 5.1]. e
Paris Agreement also moves beyond carbon and refers
to issues such as equity, sustainable development, and
other non-carbon benefits. We must consider how
the 17 U.N. Sustainable Development Goals [2] fac-
tor into such efforts. Osborne and Shapiro [15], for
example, describe the relative successes of two carbon
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sequestration projects in Mexico when one is tightly
focused on carbon accounting and the other has less
rigorous accounting but is cognizant of social and envi-
ronmental co-benefits.
e challenge is thus to provide incentives for main-
taining and increasing the amount of carbon seques-
tered in the biosphere while simultaneously pursuing
the other social and environmental goals of the U. N.
Sustainable Development Agenda and of program par-
ticipants and program neighbors. Monitoring and
verification of carbon storage need to be sufficient to
demonstrate additional sequestration from the atmos-
phere. Motivations need to have adequate near-term
focus to confront current environmental and market
changes and to avoid foreclosing options for the future.
is short paper raises the question of motivat-
ing participation in forest offset programs that would
involve increasing participation by adopting less strin-
gent program requirements, or by reassigning respon-
sibilities such as permanence and additionality from
the project level to the programmatic level. We focus
on “permanence” but speculate that less stringent
standards generally would increase participation by
small landowners or financially marginal parties. We
suggest that overall program impact could be increased
by balancing ease of participation with the rigor of
accounting and verification and that rigorous pro-
gram requirements disproportionally discourage small
landowners.
Methods andresults
The importance ofsmall landowners
Many barriers to entry with regard to the commonly
cited requirements disproportionately affect small land
owners (landowners with less than about 200 ha), who
own more than 50% of the private, forested land in the
United States. Data from 1994 show that more than 90%
of private owners of forested land had holdings of less
than 40ha and that these smaller parcels involved over
30% of private, forested land in the U.S. [16]. Figure1
shows the extent of current forest land in the contigu-
ous U.S. and suggests the broad suitability for increas-
ing forest coverage or improving forest management to
increase carbon storage. Figure2 shows the distribution
of land ownership parcel size (including unforested land)
in the U.S. states of North Carolina and Montana, illus-
trating the dominance of ownership by small landowners
Fig. 1 A map of forest land in the contiguous U.S. shows the broad suitability for forest cover and the broad potential for maintaining and/or
increasing carbon sequestration in forests
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in North Carolina and of slightly larger parcel sizes in
Montana.
With the suggestion above that parcels below 600ha
are not financially viable for the California forest carbon
offset program, 80% of the privately owned land (parcels
less than 100ha) in North Carolina is implicitly excluded
from participation in these programs by all but the land-
owners most committed to mitigating climate change,
and those landowners were likely to preserve their for-
ests regardless. Montana is different, but still 25% of the
privately owned land is distributed in parcels of less than
100ha and more than 99% in parcels less than 1000ha.
is is hardly the additionality that offset programs seek,
i.e. it does not motivate additional carbon sequestration
on lands that would not do so in the absence of the offset
program. Figure3 shows the proportion of land and land-
owners in North Carolina for different parcel sizes, dem-
onstrating the dominance of the state by small holdings.
Note that the histograms do include land not currently
in forest, which significantly increases the proportion of
landowners of small parcel sizes. Over 60% of North Car-
olina is forested [20] and our interest is in both preserv-
ing and increasing forests.
In contrast to the roughly 50% of forest under private
ownership in the U.S., over 75% of forest land in Sweden,
for example, is privately owned, whereas 0% is privately
owned in Russia [21]. While there is clearly great varia-
tion among countries, data from the U.S. and Sweden
illustrate the importance of the small landowner. Accord-
ing to Haugen etal. [22], the mean size of privately owned
productive forest land in Sweden (NIPF—non-industrial
private owners) is less than 65ha, accounting for 50% of
the area of productive forest land in Sweden.
Looking at the pattern of land ownership in North
Carolina and Sweden illustrates the challenge. Plus,
parcelization will likely serve to increase the importance
of small land-owners over time [23]. Federal lands com-
prise 28% of U.S. land [24]. Globally, Obersteiner etal.
[25] write about the 1.6 billion people who economically
depend on forests. Co-benefits and issues beyond carbon
storage will continue to play a major role in land manage-
ment decisions.
Given sequestration opportunities for terrestrial car-
bon storage in small holdings, how do we motivate car-
bon storage given the broad range of land ownership and
land management? Encouraging participation requires a
detailed understanding of what motivates small landown-
ers, in different regions and different countries; and find-
ing ways to balance our rigorous accounting ideals with
the reality of the needed incentives. Gren and Aklilu [26]
note pointedly that for forest carbon programs “specific
design problems are associated with the heterogeneity of
landowners, uncertainty, additionality, and permanence
in carbon projects.” e limits to carbon sequestration
are not all in the biophysics. Gren and Aklilu suggest
that one alternative is to “accept the magnitude of non-
additionality and non-permanence and design policy
instruments accounting for the deficiencies”. e key for
confronting climate change is to motivate establishment
of forest where forest does not exist and to motivate the
preservation of forest land as forest land.
Fig. 2 Maps of U.S. states North Carolina and Montana [17] illustrate land parcel size for the states. Yellow colored parcels are government owned.
The rest of the parcels are shaded by parcel size with the darker green indicating larger parcel sizes. Data are from the NC ONEmap [18] resource
produced by the North Carolina Centers for Geographic Information and Analysis [19]
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Barriers toparticipation
A number of analyses have looked at potential barriers
to participation in forest offset programs (e.g. [13, 26]).
Some few have even polled landowners to determine
their positions first hand [6, 27]. While many of these
studies report most of the same barriers, there is varia-
tion by region. Here we discuss briefly some of the pre-
vailing thoughts. Our objective is to understand what
then is required of an accounting system that would
motivate negative carbon emissions through sequestra-
tion in the terrestrial biosphere, especially for a system
that considers the interests of small landowners? And, do
we need to show these negative emissions on the same
balance sheet with positive emissions?
All approaches to forest carbon offsets encounter
the problem of adverse selection, i.e. the prospect of
conferring offsets to a project that would have taken
place regardless of the incentives offered. Projects that
are not truly additional discredit the integrity of the pro-
gram and permit excess emissions elsewhere if they do
not generate true additional negative emissions. In a sys-
tem of practice-based payments it is often that govern-
ments are paying for the carbon offsets (although there
are some projects with private sponsors) and it is impor-
tant to be able to show that offset projects actually reduce
net carbon emissions.
From 1994 data for the United States, almost 30% of
forest landowners were retired and these older landown-
ers owned over 32% of the privately owned land [16]. is
means that commitments over 20 years likely involve
committing the land beyond the ownership of the cur-
rent owner. While this may help transition commitments
Fig. 3 Histograms showing the distribution by parcel size of land ownership and land area in North Carolina. The top two panels reflect the
proportion of owners with different parcel sizes while the bottom two panels reflect the proportion of total area in the state taken up by parcels of
that size category. Data is from the NC ONEmap resource produced by the North Carolina Centers for Geographic Information and Analysis [19]
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over time for the same property and ensure stability of
the project, many landowners are reluctant to commit
to agreements for long periods of time. e California
forest offset program, for example, has a minimum real
commitment of 120–100years past when the last credit
is earned. An agreement that.
Further, the administrative costs of initiating a project
are not insignificant and entail many of the same costs,
regardless of the size of the project. Initial inventories
of the land are scaled, but filing papers and organiz-
ing reporting are similar. e earning of credits is often
delayed from the costs of listing the project. While it
hasn’t been mentioned prominently in the literature, due
to many of the programs being quite new, many of the
credits earned in forest offset projects are heavily front
loaded. at is, the number of earned credits goes down
over time, for example when a reforested area begins to
mature. With the land committed to a program, little
income would be coming into pay for the ongoing pro-
tection, inventories, and administrative costs. e value
of the land with ongoing costs, little income, and limita-
tions on usage is likely diminished. With ownership turn-
over typically occurring every few decades, it is not clear
what the implications on values and future participation
might look like. To build a carbon market, carbon needs
to show desirable qualities as a stable object for trading
(Liu 2017).
A common concern, additionality, is an essential crite-
rion for credits in all accounting standards and schemes.
Additionality is, however, a complex concept. It is essen-
tially a question of causation. Can one relate the emission
reduction to a particular incentive? ere is, however, a
direct impact on environmental integrity from non-addi-
tional credits.
Further barriers to entry include the initial process of
determining a baseline and reversal risk—never a simple
undertaking, especially for small land owners without an
analyst or accountant to expedite the process. Muddling
through the analyses necessary to evaluate and quantify
the baseline and reversal risk outlined in the California
protocol, for example, is no easy task. e necessary
accounting may be enough to turn many small landown-
ers away.
Even within individual protocols accounting rules can
include inconsistencies in the evaluation and award of an
offset ton. In the California cap and trade program, for
example, land-based carbon uptake is sometimes dis-
counted depending on the value of the land for alternate
purposes, i.e. the opportunity cost of choosing to seques-
ter carbon. In essence place matters because of the differ-
ences in the value of other goals in land use.
In pay-for-performance systems, issues of base-
lines, additionality, risk, measurement uncertainty,
permanence, verification, and leakage often get treated
differently in different protocols and create challenges for
fungibility of credits among offset systems (e.g. [28]). A
ton is not necessarily a ton [29]. e value of emissions
offsets can vary with their duration, their uncertainty,
their risk, the buyer’s (renter’s) discount rate, and with
the buyer’s (renter’s) expectation of the growth rate of
damages from carbon emissions.
One of the issues with current programs is a focus on
preserving standing forests and an aversion to harvesting.
While maintaining a healthy, standing forest is impor-
tant, harvesting wood and putting that carbon into long
lasting products can sometimes increase the chance that
the carbon will be stored for longer than if it remained in
the forest, and thus increase the total amount of carbon
stored in the biosphere. e half-life of forest products
in construction can be up to 100years and the chance
of reversal may be small compared to the risk of insect
infestation or fire in a forest. In the California forest off-
set system landfill carbon is treated inconsistently and
the landfill is under-realized as a viable storage place for
carbon. Storing carbon in landfills may be less desirable
than frugal use of resources and extending the useful
lifetime of a product, but the effectiveness of a landfill in
carbon storage is still important [30].
Landowners have many different motivations for
keeping their forested land forested. Many do not actu-
ally want to harvest at all and are more interested in the
inherent beauty of the landscape and the ecosystem liv-
ing in the forest. While it is challenging to place a value
on these intangible assets, some studies have shown sig-
nificant willingness to pay for such environments [31].
Jurisdictions have, by and large, innovated towards
more standardization and streamlining of the concept of
additionality. Given the fragmentation of the carbon mar-
ket, many jurisdictions have set about creating their own
offset scheme, more appropriate to their circumstances
and motivations. Increased ambition in reducing net
carbon emissions will likely raise the demand for inter-
national trading of offsets, but will also increase scrutiny
on the credibility of the additionality determination of
offsets [32, p. 23]. is implies a potentially bigger role
for international transfers of carbon allowances and cred-
its. As domestic carbon initiatives interact with national
commitments, carbon credits with different additional-
ity protocols or demands may significantly hinder linking
[32, p. 24].
Discussion
The 2050 EZ
In a 2012 paper Richards and Huebner raised the ques-
tion of the feasibility of designing a forest carbon-offset
protocol that provides both reasonable credibility and
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low transaction costs. ey wrote that “It is critical that
estimates of offset projects emissions reductions and
removals reflect actual contributions” [33, p. 393]. ere
are serious limitations to a project-based carbon offset
strategy [33]. But, is it necessary that debits and credits
be symmetric and immediate? And, while we recognize
that time matters, that a ton of carbon emitted now is
not the opposite of a ton sequestered 10years from now,
there is not an agreed approach for the temporal dis-
counting of emissions and sequestration.
What then are the issues in equating a ton of carbon,
in offsetting emissions, in trading of emissions, in evalu-
ating the multiple goals of land management, in defining
and measuring negative carbon emissions?
In the case of forest carbon sequestrations, a less strin-
gent accounting approach may increase participation and
thus increase ultimate carbon storage, along with achiev-
ing greater buy-in for climate friendly policies and the
co-benefits that generally accompany forest management
for carbon. Can we define “good enough” (Richards and
Huebner) while minimizing transaction costs? Olsson
etal. [34] have suggested a system wherein some uncer-
tainties are accepted in order to achieve clean develop-
ment and the participation of countries that are in an
early stage of development.
To encourage project participation, protocols must rec-
ognize that business-as-usual is market-based, dynamic,
and difficult to demonstrate for additionality; and that
current decisions affect current actions but cannot guar-
antee permanence. We need to recognize that place mat-
ters because of opportunity costs, risks, and non-carbon,
contextual factors. We need straight-forward and non-
punitive approaches for dealing with risks and reversals.
We also need a comprehensive and consistent treat-
ment of durable wood products and carbon in landfills.
In sum, we need clear incentives and simple accounting
approaches that encourage participation by diverse par-
ticipants, including small land holders. We need to con-
front measuring, reporting and verification at some level.
e simplified 1040EZ filing system for U.S. income
taxes may provide insight for a protocol model that bal-
ances reward, effort, and risk, while still achieving the
overall objectives of standardized protocols and credible
results. e 1040EZ tax form in the U.S. is designed for
people who have very simple finances or for people who
do not want to spend the time and effort for filing their
tax returns personally. People who use this form may
end up paying a bit more in taxes, but are saved the task
of compiling the data needed to document deductions,
expenses, and other related tax transactions. Its appeal is
its simplicity.
We propose the idea of a “2050 EZ protocol” for for-
est carbon sequestration—as a complement to existing
protocols. We propose developing a very simple process
for enrolling land in a forest offset program that lowers
the barriers that discourage small landowners from par-
ticipating. In the next section we outline the main ten-
ets of such a program and suggest strategies for reducing
administrative overhead, lowering transaction costs, and
reducing commitment lengths; but preserving environ-
mental integrity, albeit with some accepted analytical
uncertainty. e earned carbon credits could be less than
for the currently available protocols but the lower point
of entry might increase participation and provide a vital
contribution to the overall goal of mitigating climate
change. Our discussion alludes to the multiple barriers
to participation but focuses on the need for long-term
or “permanent” commitments. We note that forest offset
programs do not require “permanence” to be effective.
Marland etal. [35] described a system of carbon rentals
and Lintunen and Rautiainen [36] analyze the equiva-
lency of a rental approach with a traditional “subsidize-
and-tax model”.
Goals
e challenge then, is to develop a simple protocol that
many small landowners could implement for renewable
short-term contracts with minimum transaction costs.
A protocol that would encourage and reward retention
of forests and storing carbon in forests. We will call this
process the 2050EZ process in recognition of the US tax
form and the target date of many emissions scenarios.
ere are at least two reasons that the 1040EZ tax form
is worthwhile to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. First,
it is everyone’s responsibility to pay their taxes so that
everyone pays their “fair share”, and second, the govern-
ment needs the money to function. While the percent-
age of people filing the 1040EZ paper form is only a small
fraction of total filings (about 13% of total paper returns),
that still accounts for over 5.5 million people in 2010 [37].
e impact on the government budget is important. We
look at the 2050 EZ form in the same way. Everyone has
a responsibility to contribute to solving the problem of
human-caused climate change (we all benefit regardless
where the fault may lie), and if enough people participate
it can make a big impact on the sequestration of carbon
from the atmosphere. Participation of small landowners
would also provide a solid base of climate policy support-
ers who would feel vested in the solution and feel tangi-
ble benefits from their investiture. We begin with the two
basic tenets of the 2050 EZ protocol:
1. e protocol should enable widespread participa-
tion in forest carbon offsets without high transac-
tion costs that disproportionately disadvantage small
landowners.
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2. e protocol should produce fewer credits per pro-
ject than the standard protocols, to account for the
increased uncertainty of projects that do not fit cur-
rent definitions of additionality and permanence, or
that have higher measurement uncertainty.
e goal is to create more buy-in from landowners with
small land holdings. e projects need to be effective,
but the more buy-in the better for long-term and wide-
spread support of climate friendly and sustainable poli-
cies (see, e.g. [38]). Landowners who hold large areas of
land or particularly productive lands should be encour-
aged to participate in the more rigorous accounting of the
full protocols. ose protocols have more strict require-
ments and the projects under those guidelines may be
more likely to represent permanent reductions that have
more accurate accounts of the carbon sequestered from
the atmosphere. e 2050 EZ would likely produce fewer
dollars per hectare over the life of a project, but there
are so many parameters and uncertainties in the calcu-
lations that it is challenging to ensure that. With these
fundamental objectives in mind and the basic approaches
outlined, we turn discussion to several topics that war-
rant more discussion. In the past, short-term storage has
caused some debate. We offer two arguments to sup-
port the use of short-term commitments and the value
of short term storage. As a simple model, we can look at
the effect of short term storage in an intuitive way. More
realistic models would follow the same basic trends. Sup-
pose we assume that a single product might be produced
at a constant rate (J) and decay exponentially (first order
decay—unrealistic, but a beginning). en the stock of
that product would follow the following model.
e rate of decay is r and the half-life (
Thl
) of the prod-
uct is
Thl
=
ln
(
2)
r
. If we replace r in Eq.(1), we get
(1)
d[Stock]
dt
=J−r·[Stock
]
In steady state, the total stock reaches a value of
Equation3 shows that the steady state stock of carbon
in the product is directly proportional to the half-life
of the product. Now suppose that we extend the half-
life of the product by 10% while the rate of production
is unchanged. is translates into a 10% increase in the
total, steady-state stock of carbon contained in that prod-
uct. So even though the carbon stored in a single unit
of product is temporary, the increase in half-life results
in more carbon retained out of the atmosphere. is is
where the value of short-term storage and the value of
short-term projects can make a difference. We need to
avoid thinking of each forest carbon project in isolation,
but instead consider its contribution to the larger pro-
gram comprised of multiple projects.
If we look more carefully at the accumulation of carbon
through short-term projects, we can look at forests them-
selves as examples. Forests are valued as vital stocks of
carbon. Forests can sequester large quantities of carbon,
and with careful management, can store even more. In
fact, a simple calculation similar to the one above shows
that if the average half-life of harvested wood from a for-
est exceeds the rotation time of the harvest, there will be
more carbon from the forest in its products than in the
forest itself.
Each tree in a forest has a finite lifetime, seen as short-
term carbon storage. But, trees do not live forever. A for-
est is a collection of short-term projects that we consider
to be a long-term storage of carbon. In the same way,
short-term carbon sequestration project can be consid-
ered as a part of a larger long-term program. Figure 4
shows a simulation of a conglomeration of short term
projects of varying length and magnitude and how their
(2)
d[Stock]
dt
=J−
ln (2)
Thl
[Stock
]
(3)
[
Stock]SteadyState =
JT
hl
ln (2)
Fig. 4 The left panel simulates a series of hypothetical, short term, small projects that begin and end over intervals of 10 to 30 years. The projects
are scaled to hold between 0 and 1 unit of carbon. The right panel shows the accumulation of carbon for all of the projects added together
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Page 9 of 11
Wiseetal. Carbon Balance Manage (2019) 14:16
combination comprises a relatively steady, long term
program.
In the “Discussion” section above we characterized the
nature of land ownership in both the United States and
Sweden, taking note of the distribution of parcel sizes and
the fact that small parcels collectively comprise a large
fraction of the total area of forested land. If the barriers
to entry into a forest carbon offset program are too great
for all of these small landowners to reasonably consider
joining such a forest offset program, we should consider
accounting protocols that lower the barrier for entry.
Two means to potentially increase the participation
of small land owners include shorter contracts of “per-
manence” for only, for example, 20years, and a simple
standard measure of forest carbon stocks. Shortening the
contract length to 20years at first glance seems like a risk,
as a land owner could much more quickly and easily back
out of the program. However, the 100-year time commit-
ment is likely more of a gate- keeping obstacle that pre-
vents land owners from joining offset protocols to begin
with. e generations-long commitment is unlikely to
appeal to those not part of a conservancy or other organ-
ization that will outlast them. It could be more beneficial
to offset programs to gain the interest and participation
of many land owners with shorter contracts, and then to
provide enough incentives for them during the timeline
of the contract that they consider extension for another
term afterward.
Second, the use of a simple approximation of carbon
based on data such as LiDAR or other canopy-cover
measures that are fast, simple, and inexpensive for a
given small plot of land could significantly decrease the
upfront and monitoring costs to the landowner for plot-
ting and measuring. While this could increase small
landowner participation, this approximation must be
conservative enough that it does not appeal to land own-
ers with large enough tracts of land. For larger projects,
lower uncertainty is desirable and they can bear the cost
of more rigorous accounting. To create the model for the
2050 EZ, we begin with several ideas that could drive the
development of the model.
1. We assume a single forest project type—a forest.
e three categories in existing protocols—refor-
estation, improved forest management, and avoided
conversion—might be considered different phases of
the same forest. First the forest must begin, then it
must grow, and finally we try to avoid having it revert
back to an un-forested state. As a consequence, off-
sets need to provide incentives for growing a forest,
growing it faster, and for keeping it as forest.
2. We credit carbon stocks rather than carbon relative
to a baseline. Baselines are both uncertain in long
term forecasting and are generally based on common
practice. In order to gain participation from more
people, credits in the EZ form could be given for the
total tonnage of carbon held in the forest and forest
products and thus kept out of the atmosphere. e
incentive for improving the management of the forest
is simply a consequence that it sequesters additional
tonnes of carbon and is therefore awarded more
credits. Increases in stocks could be rewarded more
than retention of stocks.
3. We propose short term contracts. e shorter time
reduces the permanence requirement of each indi-
vidual project but increases the appeal for more land-
owners. If a significant fraction of the projects re-
enroll at the end of their term or if there is a constant
influx of new projects, the total stock of carbon cur-
rently involved in the program at any one time would
be significant. In the same way that a single tree in a
permanent forest is transient, the program as a whole
could be considered permanent even though individ-
ual projects may enter and leave.
For each enrolled project, the total carbon inven-
tory of the forest needs to be estimated initially and at
intervals to determine the credits earned. In between
measurements, models could be used to estimate inter-
mediate values that are then reconciled at the next inven-
tory measurement.
e value of a ton of sequestered carbon could be esti-
mated based on tonne-years. ere would be incentives
for each year that a ton of carbon was retained out of the
atmosphere. Long-lived wood products would be more
attractive than short-lived products. Risks and uncer-
tainties would be unnecessary to consider since credits
would be only given for credits already earned. Penalties
are only applied for early termination of a contract.
Looking forward
Our intent in this paper is not to offer a fully developed
protocol for carbon sequestration credits but to lay the
ground work and stimulate discussion of ways to increase
the incentives for participation and thus to increase the
total amount of carbon sequestered in the biosphere. e
urgency of addressing climate change suggests a need to
increase and protect the mass of sequestered carbon. e
final question in implementing a 2050 EZ form for car-
bon sequestration activities would be to detail the best
approach for specific implementation. Selling carbon
credits on the open market works for large holdings. But
buying and selling credits from specific projects is cum-
bersome; and we must consider how the value of cred-
its from different projects are equated. e Family Forest
Carbon Program of the American Forest Foundation and
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Page 10 of 11
Wiseetal. Carbon Balance Manage (2019) 14:16
the Nature Conservancy is similarly pursuing to remove
the barriers that family forest owners encounter in many
forest carbon protocols [39].
e 2050 EZ credits should form a pool of credits that
have a defined equivalence to each other and are com-
pensated equally. One method of monetizing the cred-
its is through tax credits. Another is to treat them as a
scheduling process. e first credits that go in would be
the first paid out. Since the credits are determined each
year, projects would be assured of being paid for their
year x credits before any year x + 1 credits are paid.
Clearly there are multiple possibilities for specific
implementation of easy accounting but likely fewer cred-
its. is paper offers a framework for a new approach and
does not presume to construct an entire protocol Policy
is created through discourse and incremental develop-
ment. We offer a first step.
e end goal is to reduce atmospheric CO2 levels by
reducing the rate of emissions and increasing the rate
of sequestration. In an ideal world, all landowners and
stake holders would be in support of this goal. In reality,
we need to motivate and incentivize participation. We
need to develop programs that have appeal and gain buy-
in from many different people with varying motivations.
at means that not only should they want to participate,
they should want to continue participating. To appeal to
a broad set of land-owners, it is not clear to us that a sin-
gle one-size-fits-all program will be as effective as creat-
ing multiple programs to appeal to specific audiences.
In this scenario, we are not trying to tie up land by buy-
ing people out. Some people want to tie their land up in
programs that prevent development and create a lasting
effect long after they pass on. e system of conserva-
tion easements and conversion to public lands is a great
option for those people. Others need an alternative and
respond negatively to the idea that someone is effectively
buying them out of their choices of what can happen on
their land. Instead of buying them out, we propose to get
them to buy in, repeatedly.
Conclusion
Here we have laid some ground work and proposed
developing a system that relies on short-term agreements
and easy accessibility for encouraging the accumulation
and retention of carbon in forests. is system will likely
not be as effective in generating carbon credits per unit
of land area in each project as a more rigorous program,
but we propose getting people to buy in and become part
of an ongoing system. If they do not want to keep par-
ticipating, then we have created an insufficiently motivat-
ing system. We aim on obtaining lots of participation on
small efforts. e challenge is balancing program strin-
gency and participation.
We propose that shorter contracts will be more attrac-
tive to small land owners but shorter contracts also offer
flexibility for the program administration. e terms of
the agreements could be modified as new ideas emerge
or as the climate changes. e ideal agreements now may
not be ideal 50years in the future and we may not want
to bind ourselves to a system that may not mesh with
reality at that time.
Finally, we note that one of the ways to move toward
more effective climate-stabilizing policies is to get more
people vested in short-term outcomes. While a program
aimed at small landowners may not sequester as much
carbon per landowner as existing programs, each of
those landowners gets the same number of votes in elec-
tions. Participation in a small program now may turn into
support for broader programs later.
Abbreviations
CO2: carbon dioxide; LiDAR: light detection and ranging.
Acknowledgements
We thank Sean Sweeney for his assistance and advice in the GIS work that
went into this project. Two anonymous reviewers offered valuable sugges-
tions that greatly improved the coherence of this text. Also, we are grateful for
the Joint Venture Agreement with the United State Forest Service, Northern
Research Station, that helped to fund this work.
Authors’ contributions
LW produced Figs. 1, 3, led writing. EM produced Fig. 4, guided project. GM
led background study and literature review. JH worked on literature review
and final editing. TK1 worked on contextualization and accounting framing. TR
worked on policy framing and understanding barriers. JC and TK2 Led the GIS
work and produced Fig. 2. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Funding
This work was not funded by any sources outside of the home institution.
Availability of data and materials
The raw data used in the work are all clearly referenced and available online.
The data used to produce the figures is available upon request.
Ethics approval and consent to participate
Not applicable.
Consent for publication
Not applicable.
Competing interests
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Author details
1 Department of Mathematical Sciences, Appalachian State University, Boone,
USA. 2 Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences, Appalachian
State University, Boone, USA. 3 Appalachian Energy Center, Appalachian State
University, Boone, USA. 4 Department of Accounting, Appalachian State Uni-
versity, Boone, USA. 5 Department of Government and Justice Studies, Appala-
chian State University, Boone, USA. 6 Department of Geography and Planning,
Appalachian State University, Boone, USA.
Received: 13 June 2019 Accepted: 15 November 2019
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Wiseetal. Carbon Balance Manage (2019) 14:16
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