Nature-based climate solutions play a key role in the fight against climate change, and the careful stewardship of Canadian forests is a vital example. Sustainable forest practices promote carbon storage, conserve biodiversity, and ensure resilient forest ecosystems.
Environment and Climate Change Canada continues to support sustainable forest practices with the third federal offset protocol for use under Canada's Greenhouse Gas Offset Credit System-Improved Forest Management on Private Land.
Forest ecosystems remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and convert it into biomass in living trees, dead organic matter, and forest soil-a process called biological carbon sequestration. Actions that increase carbon stored and avoid carbon loss in managed forests can reduce the amount of harmful greenhouse gases in the atmosphere-this has a lasting impact in the fight against climate change.
This new protocol gives project developers a financial incentive to implement voluntary forest management practices that will increase the amount of carbon stored in forestlands and earn revenue for those projects. Foresters, Indigenous communities, and other project developers can earn credits under this protocol by minimizing site degradation, thinning diseased trees, increasing rotation age, and doing other activities that maintain or enhance carbon storage.
Indigenous peoples in Canada have a long history of environmental stewardship. This protocol will not only help fight climate change by incentivizing forest-based emissions reduction projects but will also create economic opportunities for Indigenous communities who have been taking climate action.
Canada's Greenhouse Gas Offset Credit System is among several measures that the government is taking to reduce domestic greenhouse gas emissions by 40 to 45 percent below 2005 levels by 2030, and it delivers on a commitment in Canada's 2030 Emissions Reduction Plan. This protocol joins the existing suite of protocols under the system, which include Landfill Methane Recovery and Destruction and Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Refrigeration Systems.
While this protocol is not applicable to projects on provincial or federal Crown lands (excluding First Nation reserves) and public land in the territories, Environment and Climate Change Canada will begin developing a protocol for Improved Forest Management on Public Land in 2024.
