This article was originally published on Blue & Green Tomorrow.
“A new approach to valuing the services provided by nature is the key to protecting the world’s rainforests whilst reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Achieving this is one of the key steps towards transforming the Paris Agreement on climate change into visible action.
To meet this goal the High Carbon Stock Approach (HCSA) must play a more prominent role in developing climate finance opportunities by making the value of forests clear, and linking them with both carbon targets and climate finance goals, proposed Aida Greenbury, Managing Director Sustainability, Asia Pulp & Paper Group and Co-Chair of the HCSA Steering Group during a HCS Steering Group event at COP22 in Morocco.
HCSA is a methodology to assess natural landscapes that distinguishes forest areas for protection from degraded lands. Crucially it provides a common standard for defining forests by measuring the carbon and biodiversity within them. This enables the value generated by protecting natural forest landscapes to be calculated and thus enable investors to understand their contribution in meeting climate change goals. With the HCSA approach increasingly becoming a common standard, it is time to use it to help achieve the Paris Agreement.
…“Assigning a financial value to Natural Capital, makes it possible to match climate change targets and funding with tangible action on the ground. This is the missing link. Not all businesses fully understand their dependency on natural resources and the risk or return potential presented by climate change. At the same time avoiding the worst impacts of climate change means that we must ramp up engagement by the business community. Speaking their language and explaining the business implications of climate change is one way to do so” concluded Ms Greenbury…”
Read on at: Blue & Green Tomorrow.
