Resurrection

"Reclaiming forest is by itself not new, but when you link it up to an emerging carbon market and carbon sequestration, then that becomes a pretty interesting new instrument to be able to support these kinds of ideas," says Michael Jenkins, the executive director of the Washington, D.C.–based Forest Trends. "The carbon market and carbon credits are a potentially key financial instrument to be able to support reforestation globally."

Local people will benefit, too, and not just because their forests will be preserved. The emergence of other new markets that put a monetary value on nature’s most indispensable creations — things like the water table or a forest — will reward farmers and landowners for preserving them as nature intended, adds Jenkins. The government will get a paycheck for the carbon its forests store in their biomass, and forest landowners will be paid by residents of, say, São Paulo for maintaining the city’s watersheds.

"We have to create a market so that things like biodiversity conservation and watershed conservation and climate mitigation are things that are just as valuable as wood cut down and chopped up," Jenkins adds. "Right now that’s not the case, but that’s where we are going and that’s what is exciting about the potential of the carbon market. We will keep forests standing, and 10 or 20 years from now, standing forests will be equally as valuable as cutting it down and putting a shopping mall in."

Carbon makes up half the dry weight of a tree. To measure how much atmospheric carbon is stored in a forest foresters literally measure the trees' diameters and calculate their biomass.

GM says it chose Brazil as the site for the project for a variety of reasons. Aside from Europe and North America, Brazil is GM’s biggest vehicle market, racking up sales of $4 billion last year. The forests along the Atlantic coast soak up more carbon dioxide per hectare than similar areas in the United States, and property prices are lower than in the United States. But the potential financial benefits were not the most important factor, says Fred Sciance, manager of GM’s global climate issues team.

"It is part of a broader environmental strategy that has other benefits besides carbon credits," says Sciance. "We are anxious to demonstrate how effective carbon sequestration projects can be at both addressing the atmospheric carbon dioxide issue while also producing a number of co-benefits for the environment. It is a win-win situation."

Sciance says he hopes other companies will see the situation the same way and realize the potential possibilities in making greenbacks by saving green spaces.

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