One of the hallmarks of Dogwood Alliance’s Carbon Canopy forest carbon project has been an insistence on rigor in our carbon accounting and in our forest management certification. That is why the Carbon Canopy project develops forest carbon offsets using the Air Resources Board protocol under California’s groundbreaking Global Warming Solutions Act with the forest managed to conserve and enhance the carbon held in the forests with deliberate, responsible forest management under the gold standard Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification.
So, what does this “rigor” really mean? For our forest carbon projects it means a lot of work. Foresters and forestry technicians go out in the woods and measure trees on 1/10th of an acre to survey plots spread across the project area. To gain a high degree of statistical certainty, we number crunch large amounts of data, determining the standing carbon contained in the project areas’ different forest types. We perform extensive computer modeling of the forest carbon cycle, including projected growth rates and FSC logging over a one hundred year period.
Field verification of Dogwood’s Heartwood Carbon Canopy Project near Dante, VA
In both the ARB and FSC systems, all of the work is reviewed by third parties to ensure compliance with the relevant standards and regulations as well as our plans. In the FSC process, it’s called an “audit”, and in the ARB forest carbon world, the process is called “verification”. Both the FSC and the ARB require not one but two sets of eyes to confirm that the benefits promised under these systems are delivered. Just this week, we’ve got a team out in the field, verifying one of the Carbon Canopy’s projects in southwest Virginia.
Forest management and forest carbon accounting are both complicated subjects related to complex natural systems. That is why it is critically important to have third-parties review and verify and audit the claims made under the systems.
Building forest carbon projects takes a lot of work. But it is potentially a very powerful tool to re-balance the forest products industry, which has for far too long been based only on logging forests for wood products. These projects can help fulfil the critical role of forests in mitigating climate change. With one of our Carbon Canopy projects currently undergoing verification, we’re building the leading edge of responsible 21st century forestry on the ground right now.
Learn more about Carbon Canopy here:
Our friends at Biofuelwatch in the UK are organizing an Alternative Biomess Awards Ceremony on April 9th in London. They’re shining a spotlight on the who’s who of companies investing in promoting biomass, a false solution to climate change, along with the biggest pellet makers in the Southern US and Canada that are sending our forests off to the UK to be burned for electricity.
The honored nominees include:
Of course, they’re all deserving of this award, but we hope you’ll consider casting your vote for Enviva and Drax, two of Dogwood Alliance’s biggest targets in our biomass Our Forests Aren’t Fuel Campaign. If you need a reminder why, check out this videofeaturing Enviva’s impact on our coastal forests or this recent story from the Daily Mail from the UK featuring Drax.
Additionally, on April 23rd, Biofuelwatch is planning an event outside of the Drax annual shareholder meeting where they will call for an end to big biomass and coal as well as an end to subsidies that allow operators like Drax to keep profiting from destruction. Drax power station in Yorkshire is converting three of its six units to run on biomass. Since its last shareholder meeting, it has converted and opened one unit and burned up to 5.5 million tons of green wood (mostly imported) – that’s equivalent to more than half of the UK’s annual wood production. At full capacity, this unit alone will have netted them £190 million in subsidies.
Alcazar Palace in Seville, Spain
This year Dogwood Alliance will be attending the tri-annual General Assembly in Seville, Spain, marking the 20th anniversary of Forest Stewardship Council‘s (FSC) efforts to bring different stakeholders together to find a sustainable future for the world’s forests and the people who inhabit them. This is an exciting opportunity to get together with forest activists and other FSC members and stakeholders from around the world, including many forest products companies from the US South that we have been working with for years. In addition, Dogwood is planning to use this critical platform to focus attention on issues important to Southern Forests and work to strengthen the system moving forward. This international forum will also give us a great chance to speak to a broad audience about the Our Forests Aren’t Fuel campaign and the global connections driving forest destruction from the fast-growing biomass pellet industry here in the US.
The gathering of unique stakeholders for FSC’s General Assembly
One of Dogwood Alliance’s most important tools for protecting forests is the FSC forest management certification system. The FSC sets strict guidelines and standards to ensure good forest management on working forest lands. Every year 5 or 6 million acres are logged across the South. So making sure logging is done responsibly (in the right place and in the right way) is critical. Nature is generous, and FSC is a necessity to maintain the amazing beauty and world-class conservation values of this landscape.
FSC General Assembly
Because forest management certification is so important, Dogwood Alliance has worked hard in our public campaigns to get large paper users like McDonald’s, Staples and Office Depot to commit to purchase FSC certified paper and large pulp. We also got huge paper companies like International Paper to buy certified wood and produce FSC products. Dogwood’s Executive Director Danna Smith serves on the FSC US Board of Directors, and I serve on a FSC Working Group.
[youtube]https://youtu.be/00aOdYxUQB8[/youtube]
Guest Post Written by Hope Taylor & Belinda Joyner of Clean Water for North Carolina
In November of 2011, Enviva, a major corporate wood pellet producer with international sales, began operations at a former Georgia Pacific sawmill in Ahoskie, NC. Residents close to the plant have faced 24/7 extreme noise levels and bright lights. They’ve lived with sticky wood dust that coats cars, buildings and lungs in just a few minutes, as well as dangerous, heavy truck traffic. While European power plants seek huge shipments of wood pellets as supposedly “greener” fuel than the coal they’ve burned in the past, eastern North Carolina has turned into the Southeast’s latest energy colony. Large swaths of clear-cut forests and enormous pellet mills, doing around-the-clock production, are now in the midst of formerly quiet communities with limited resources and political clout.
As soon as the Ahoskie mill started up, Enviva began building an even more massive plant near Garysburg, Northampton County, designed to produce over 1.1 BILLION pounds of wood pellets per year, to be shipped through a Virginia port to Europe. Belinda Joyner, Northeast Organizer for Clean Water for North Carolina, lives in Garysburg and worked with residents around the Ahoskie mill to document noise and other impacts to get the attention of state air quality regulators on the dangerous dust problem. Belinda urged her Northampton County neighbors to get involved in local planning decisions and talk to County Commissioners about their concerns.
The Garysburg plant started operations in early 2013. The mostly African-American residents living nearby were stunned by the noise, dust and traffic that suddenly slammed into their rural residential area. They began working hard with Belinda and the Concerned Citizens of Northampton County to bring the attention of local officials to the conditions that Enviva forces them to live in every day.
Recently, the County Commissioners considered a proposal to rezone a large area around the Enviva plant to be considered “heavy industrial.” This was eye-opening to local residents, who couldn’t imagine how such an industry as massive as Enviva had been allowed to locate in an area zoned for “light” industry. To prevent the entire region from becoming a “sacrifice zone,” the community has mobilized and held local officials accountable, coming in force to County Commission meetings and getting good media reports. The rezoning has been tabled indefinitely, and the community continues to document impacts of Enviva’s operations.
Working to protect vulnerable communities helps protect vulnerable natural resources, too. The few dozen jobs created in these mills will disappear quickly as the source of wood close to the mill is logged out. Just as with other extractive industries, greed and shortsighted development will only leave blighted communities with less diverse economies than before the extraction began. Rather than such “hit and run” production, Environmental Justice calls for safe, sustainable jobs AND communities!
Clean Water for North Carolina is a 30–year-old organization committed to working with vulnerable communities to protect and restore their environmental health and justice.
Belinda Joyner
Northeast Organizer
Clean Water for North Carolina
Hope Taylor
Executive Director
Clean Water for North Carolina
Executive Director, Danna Smith, is a finalist for the honor Outstanding Conservationist at Wild South‘s 6th Annual Roosevelt-Ashe Conservation Awards.
Danna Smith, Dogwood Alliance Executive Director
Danna was nominated for her work on Dogwood’s Our Forests Aren’t Fuel campaign, where she organized national, regional and local organizations to develop a campaign strategy to stop the large-scale burning of wood for electricity. This campaign must move fast, as international sourcing of Southern Forests to meet misguided green energy demands is driving rapid deforestation in some of the South’s most endangered forests.
Benjamin Colvin, Wild South’s Development Director says of the Roosevelt-Ashe Conservation Awards, “We believe it is vital to recognize and celebrate the incredible work being done to unite voices for environmental protection, to promote conservation science and education, to advocate for wildlife, and to protect cultural heritage on public lands.”
The winners will be announced at Wild’s South’s 6th Annual Green Gala at The Orange Peel in Asheville, North Carolina on March 21st at 7:00pm. Come out to support Danna and Dogwood while celebrating these exciting Southern conservation leaders by purchasing tickets here.
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