Carbon Forestry Projects in Developing Countries: Legal Issues and Tools

Increasing awareness of the need for action on global warming has produced a search for ways to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and to sequester carbon to offset such emissions. At the present time, nations around the globe are hotly debating whether to put into force the Kyoto Protocol. To comply with such climate controls, industrialized countries will need to develop systems to control their own domestic emissions. Domestic corporations that emit GHGs will be required to limit their emissions and will also very likely be able to gain credit by investing in climate-beneficial projects in other countries. This paper focuses on the legal issues concerned with carbon offset projects involving forestry in developing countries