This science-focused episode of Carbon Removal Newsroom features hosts Radhika Moolgavkar of Nori, Holly Jean Buck of the University at Buffalo, and Dr. Jane Zelikova, executive director of the Soil Carbon Solutions Center and joint faculty in crop and soil science at Colorado State University.

This week, world leaders continue climate discussions at COP26 in Glasgow, with one of the recurring conversations focusing on protecting the world’s forests. A new forest initiative called LEAF, or Lowering Emissions by Accelerating Forest Finance, was supported by the US and UK governments as well as some large multinational corporations like Amazon and Unilever. LEAF would allow developing nations to sell forest carbon offsets in the voluntary carbon markets— but should these count as carbon credits? Is additional carbon being stored?

We also look at forest carbon over-crediting in California, where research teams from several US Universities found that the state had over-counted forest CO2 by 30%. So who is responsible for this large quantity of excess credits? 

As always, we end the episode with a good news story of the week.

Resources

Systematic over-crediting in California’s forest carbon offsets program

Re-branding REDD: How the LEAF Coalition aims to greenwash Big Polluters like Delta Airlines, Amazon, Bayer, Nestlé, Salesforce, and Unilever