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What is meant by a corporate forest?
Today, so many companies are deciding to create their own corporate forest, with the aim of taking environmental action to combat climate change. But what does it mean to implement a corporate forest?
To help us answer this question and many others, we asked a real expert in the field for help: Matteo Molteni, Sustainability Consultant at Up2You.
A specialist in Energy Management and Environmental Sustainability, Matteo has been working at Up2You for years as an expert in carbon offsetting. He is in charge of analyzing and selecting certified projects for inclusion in Up2You's portfolio, and in recent years he has analyzed about 200 projects and helped more than 70 companies achieve carbon neutrality.
So what is a corporate forest?
Corporate forest refers to a solution in which a company finances the planting of a considerable number of trees. This initiative is undertaken by companies today for a variety of reasons, such as demonstrating a commitment to sustainable practices or trying to balance the company's environmental impact.
Although the corporate forest may seem like a good idea for addressing environmental issues, it does not always prove to be an effective solution and, indeed, in some cases can even be harmful.
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Why is the corporate forest not a correct choice for a company that wants to take environmental action?
Let me explain: it is not that tree planting per se has a negative impact on the environment or that it is not a useful action to address climate change. The main issue is about ensuring that the establishment of a corporate forest brings positive and lasting benefits over time.
For this, several criteria must be strictly adhered to.
-Measurability: the CO₂ absorbed by the trees must be calculated annually, and the net result compared to the initial situation must be greater than 0. In some cases, if particular species of trees are planted in unsuitable locations, the benefit may even be negative, since the initiative actually generates emissions.
-Permanence: it must be ensured that over the years the vegetation does not decrease.
-Positive co-benefits: the initiative must not affect local communities and other biodiversity. In fact, the establishment of a farm forest may result in the destruction of natural ecosystems, or the conversion of farmland or pastures into forests. This can have a negative impact on local biodiversity, as natural habitats are destroyed to make room for the new plantation.
With respect to these points, I would like to bring the focus to permanence: in order for such an initiative to exist, project developers need high cash inflows to be able to guarantee, for example, the protection of a forest area affected by deforestation.
This result can never be guaranteed, as is the case in most cases, through the payment of a single fee, moreover that is often derisory. To understand, very often these fees, or quotas, correspond to less than 1€ per tree, to cover the entire life cycle, which in some cases reaches 100 years.
To keep a tree healthy, it is essential to conduct constant monitoring by taking preventive measures against disease, fire, degradation and deforestation. On this basis, preserving the health of a forest requires an effort that cannot be justified through a single upstream investment.
So, in other words, with these premises, it is difficult for the corporate forest to continue to be kept under control as time goes by.
Correct. Another mistake to avoid is to think that planting a corporate forest will offset corporate emissions or achieve carbon neutrality: offsetting emissions is only possible through certified initiatives.
In addition to the 3 criteria listed above, a certified project must absolutely be:
-Additive: the project must be developed for the sole purpose of capturing or avoiding CO₂ emissions, and its economic viability is derived from that. For example, if you consider fruit trees, they were probably planted and are tended to produce fruit, and the CO₂ they capture is not really additional compared to if we had not invested in offsets. They would have been there anyway.
- Transparent: information about projects and carbon credits must be clear and transparent. This requirement ensures that all stakeholders can assess the effectiveness of the project, and that the certification process is accountable and reliable.
- Assessed by an independent third party: all emission reductions must be verified by an accredited third party. The audit ensures the independent review of project data and information, verifying its compliance with certification standards, and the reliability and credibility of the information provided.
These criteria are critical and ensure that the share ofCO2 equivalent used to offset corporate emissions actually corresponds to 1 ton ofCO2 equivalent.
Simply planting a tree in no case is independently assessed, and in multiple cases the information shared by project developers after receiving payment becomes increasingly rare until it disappears.
Who ensures that the corporate forest is healthy and helps generate benefits to combat climate change?
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Does the corporate forest have anything to do with greenwashing?
Certainly planting trees is a very easy claim to achieve; all one has to do is fund the initiative through a third-party entity. Any company, thanks to this initiative, can spend itself as a sustainable entity without having yet taken any action in the sustainability sphere.
The discourse changes, for example, when we talk about offsetting: offsettingCO2 emissions through certified projects compulsorily implies the calculation of corporate emissions, and in most cases a path focused on the mitigation of one's emissions over the years.
To answer the question, then, it is not necessarily when talking about corporate forests that the association with greenwashing is automatic; however, it is certainly very easy to incur this kind of accusation by communicating that one's company is sustainable just for having made its own forest.
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What then do you recommend to a company that wants to embark on a path of environmental sustainability?
If the company's goal is to offset itsCO2 emissions, I recommend looking for third-party certified environmental projects , such as Verra or Gold Standard, so you can be sure that all the criteria listed above are met.
2examples might be the Rimba Raya project, to protect Indonesia's forests, or Cordillera Azul, which combats deforestation in Peru. These are environmental projects that are created with the sole objective of capturing or not emittingCO2 emissions, thus respecting the additionality criterion we mentioned.
At Up2You, for example, we have chosen not to offer the possibility of creating corporate forests, focusing instead exclusively on certified offsetting projects, in part to avoid the risk of greenwashing for us and our corporate clients.
A proper path to environmental sustainability consists of 4 steps:
- calculation of one's corporate carbon footprint;
- implementation of an emissions reduction strategy;
- offsettingCO2 emissions that cannot be reduced through certified projects;
- only as a last step, communication of the sustainability results achieved.
Do you want to start your environmental sustainability journey? Contact us and find out how!
