How Forestry Projects Produce Carbon Credits

Carbon Forestry Projects can be broken into two categories: Avoiding Deforestation and Reforestation. GER focuses on avoided deforestation projects.

As they grow, forests capture and sequester millions of tons of carbon. When they are destroyed, by legal or illegal logging, forest fires or are cut down to make room for palm oil plantations or other agricultural uses, carbon (in the form of Carbon Dioxide CO2) is emitted back into the atmosphere. By avoiding immediate deforestation and changing the historical, and therefore likely future rate of deforestation, the essential carbon stock of the forest area is preserved. It is possible to calculate precisely how much CO2 has been prevented from being emitted into the atmosphere by (1) establishing a baseline “business as usual” deforestation rate, and (2) assessing the impact on the deforestation rate of forest protection programs that stop logging, prevent forest fires and halt agricultural encroachment.

The following chart demonstrates the deforestation rate with and without implementation of an avoided deforestation project and related forest protection programs.