Seeing the forest for the trees?

Addressing forest and land use change is critical for climate change mitigation, with approximately 20% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions each year coming from agriculture, forestry and other land use. One way to address forest and land use change is through the sale of carbon credits. Each carbon credit purportedly represents one ton CO2-equivalent reduced or removed from the atmosphere. Carbon credits issued from projects that seek to reduce or remove GHG emissions, such as tree-planting projects in the developing world. However, much research suggests that nature-based carbon credits greatly overestimate their climate benefit. In this talk, I will discuss the promise and problems of nature-based carbon credits, and propose a way forward to channel funds to nature-based solutions and more accurately claim any resulting quantified emissions reductions.

About the lecturer

Dr. Libby Blanchard is an academic researcher focused on improving the scientific integrity of climate policy. She has particular expertise in climate finance, carbon markets (carbon credits and nature-based climate solutions), climate targets and net zero commitments, and environmental policy processes.

Dr. Blanchard is currently a research associate at the Wilkes Center for Climate Science & Policy at the University of Utah She completed her PhD in 2020 at the University of Cambridge.

She collaborates closely the Berkeley Carbon Trading Project at UC Berkeley and Oxford Net Zero and is since recently, thanks to the programmes IdEx of University Côte d’Azur and Global U of the University of Utah, collaborating with IMREDD of University Côte d’Azur in the project EMMA (Environmental Management for Mitigating Emissions through More effective Allocation of water) embedded in the Chaire partenariale l’Eau dans les Territoires des Alpes-Maritimes.