Opportunities and challenges for terrestrial carbon offsetting and marketing, with some implications for forestry in the UK

Background and purpose: Climate change and its mitigation have become increasingly high profile issues since the late 1990s, with the potential of forestry in carbon sequestration a particular focus. The purpose of this paper is to outline the importance of socio-economic considerations in this area. Opportunities for forestry to sequester carbon and the role of terrestrial carbon uptake credits in climate change negotiations are addressed, together with the feasibility of bringing terrestrial carbon offsets into the regulatory emission trading scheme. The paper discusses whether or not significant carbon offsetting and trading will occur on a large scale in the UK or internationally. Materials and methods: The paper reviews the literature on the socio-economic aspects of climate change mitigation via forestry (including the authors’ research on this topic) to assess the potential for carbon offsetting and trading, and the likely scale of action. Results and conclusions: We conclude that the development of appropriate socio-economic framework conditions (e.g. policies, tenure rights, including forest carbon ownership, and markets) and incentives for creating and trading terrestrial carbon credits are important in mitigating climate change through forestry projects, and we make suggestions for future research that would be required to support such developments