California Carbon Offsets and Working Forest Conservation Easements

California’s cap-and-trade system is a vital laboratory for testing the effectiveness of this market-driven approach in meeting greenhouse gas emission reduction goals and the use of forestry-based carbon offsets within these systems generally. Based on this experience, this Article explores one of the primary challenges, layering offsets with working forest conservation easements, which currently limits opportunities to effectively use these tools in concert. Ultimately, this market may need to foster and rely on natural linkages with working forest conservation easements to develop these offsets and to better ensure that the critical societal objectives of these projects are being met