Community Forestry and Carbon Credit Project

Community Forestry and Carbon Credit Project is a pioneer project of its kind which is located in Cambodia. Dr. Mark Poffenberger who is the Executive Director of Community Forestry International spent his time with us to explain more about this project. Community Forestry International, Inc. (CFI) assists rural communities to stabilize and regenerate forests by helping policy makers, development agencies, NGOs, and professional foresters create the legal instruments, human resource capacities, and negotiation processes and methods to support resident resource managers. At CFI, they believe that including local communities in the management of natural resources leads to increased livelihood security and poverty alleviation that, in turn, encourages greater sustainable development. CFI enables community forest management strategies to become an integral part of sustainable forest management world-wide. CFI programs are implemented through four interrelated thematic areas: 1) Regional and National Policy Dialogues, 2) Mediation Processes and Methods, 3) Participatory Research and Field Programs, and 4) Communication. The program components are designed to engage national policy makers, professional practitioners, and communities to facilitate learning, reduce conflicts, and ultimately create management agreements that result in more equitable, sustainable forest use (Source: http://www.communityforestryinternational.org/about_us/who_we_are.html). This program is closely related to the UN-REDD program.

The idea is to preserve the rainforest and use it as carbon sink to reduce the carbon emission to the atmosphere thus reducing global warming. The machanism is through carbon credit where other party can send their carbons to the rainforest and pay for it which is a source of income for the communities which are looking after the forest. There are 3 major markets that have been identified which are 1) voluntary buyers - to offset emission, 2) compliance buyers - who are legally required, and 3) investors - for future appreciation. The project is further supported by the remote sensing technology to determine the carbon concentration in a certain area.