The Commonwealth Secretariat launched its Forest Carbon Market toolkit at COP29, providing a roadmap to accessing funding through the voluntary carbon market, while protecting the lives and livelihoods of Indigenous Peoples, local communities, and landowners. The Commonwealth is home to 810 million hectares of forests.
The toolkit launch was highly anticipated, drawing a large crowd at the event. The growth of forest carbon markets in recent years has been driven by increasing concerns over climate change and the need to lower greenhouse gas emissions.
The Forest Carbon Market Toolkit states: “Incentives provided through the carbon markets can help tropical forest countries to diversify funding sources and increase investment in the forest sector.” The forest carbon credit market is complex and involves multiple players, such as forest landowners, compliance buyers and voluntary buyers.
Speaking at the launch of the toolkit, the Commonwealth Secretary-General, the Rt Hon Patricia Scotland KC, said:
“This tool represents a crucial step in harnessing the power of our forests to drive both climate action and sustainable development. It is a roadmap for translating the potential of forest carbon into a tangible reality: one that benefits people, nature, and the global climate alike.
“Forests play an unparalleled role in our fight against climate change. They store and sequester vast amounts of carbon — around 2.6 billion tonnes every year: absorbing nearly a third of humanity’s fossil fuel emissions.”
The toolkit highlighted the experience of Guyana and Rwanda in accessing the carbon market, providing case studies that other Commonwealth member countries can emulate.
Vanessa Benn, Chair of the Board of Directors of the Guyana Forestry Commission and Project Coordinator at the Iwokrama International Centre for Rainforest Conservation and Development (IIC), spoke on behalf of the Guyana Minister of Natural Resources about the country’s experience in protecting forests. The IIC, under a joint mandate from the Government of Guyana and the Commonwealth Secretariat, manages the Iwokrama Forest, a unique reserve of 371,000 hectares of rainforest. Benn said:
“I am particularly appreciative of the efforts of the Commonwealth to launch the Forest Carbon Toolkit today. Guyana is the second-most forested country in the world. We maintain sustainable forestry practices and we are continually developing means by which our country can be developed.
“By using the Forest Carbon Toolkit, our country can enhance our efforts as we progress along the path of voluntary carbon markets to mitigate against the powerful impacts of climate change.”
From 2009 to 2016, Guyana received US$227 million from the Government of Norway in a non-market phase that enabled them to develop the capabilities to participate fully in the market. As a result, Guyana generated 37.5 million carbon credits from 2016 to 2020 and will be generating 7.5 million credits every year till 2030 (Commonwealth press release)
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