Afforestation, Reforestation, and Regeneration (ARR) projects are an essential part of the Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM). With around 250 certified projects and more than 300 in the certification process, the growing demand for alternatives to mitigate climate change has spurred an increase in global forest planting initiatives. However, due to the complex conditions and challenges of growing forests, each project must select and implement a series of practices to ensure success.
Given the diversity of ARR projects, their practices also vary significantly. Common questions include:
Which tree species are being planted?
What management activities are being carried out?
Do the projects include wood harvesting?
While this information is often available in project documents, the lack of standardization makes it difficult to access and time-consuming to navigate.
To simplify the understanding of ARR projects worldwide, hummingbirds conducted a comprehensive study to answer these questions. We analysed all the certified projects from VERRA, Gold Standard, American Carbon Registry (ACR), and Cercarbono, which together account for 82% of the total ARR carbon credits issued.
To make comparisons possible, we included in our analysis only pure ARR projects and ARR + WRC (Wetland Restoration and Conservation projects) that are mangrove restoration projects. In total, the ARR projects in the VCM from the standards mentioned account for around 500 projects (under all statuses) located across all five continents. When accounting also for projects in the pipeline, India (70 projects), China (65), Colombia (52), Brazil (33), and Uganda (18) are leading in number of projects. However, the countries with the most credits issued differ slightly with Uruguay (~16 million), China (~13 million), Colombia (~11.5 million), Brazil (~6.5 million) and Uganda (~3.8 million) at the top (See map below). This discrepancy highlights differences between the projects in terms of size and the time required for projects to shift from certification to credit issuance.
Classifying the projects into categories is not an easy task as the same project can include different technical itineraries with various activities. Nevertheless, we categorized the ARR projects into the main activities within four main types:
Among the registered ARR projects in the 4 standards analysed, there are 89 projects classified as commercial plantation, 54 as forest restoration, 35 as agroforestry, and 10 as wetland restoration. Countries like China (34/35 projects) and United States (5/5 projects) favour Forest restoration, while Uruguay (10/10 projects) and Colombia (36/41 projects) focus on commercial plantations. Uganda (8/11 projects), Kenya (8/8) and India (4/11 projects) primarily engage in agroforestry.
Worldwide, ARR projects use 590 tree species. The most common are Teak (Tectona grandis), Eucalyptus (Eucalyptus grandis), Pinus (Pinus patula), Guava (Psidium guajava), and Silky Oak (Grevillea robusta).
Agroforestry projects use the most diverse range, with an average of 29 species per project, followed by forest restoration with an average of 9 species, and commercial plantation with 4 species. In commercial plantation projects, 78% of the species are exotic, while Agroforestry projects use a near-equal mix of exotic (51%) and native (49%) species. Forest restoration projects predominantly use native species (93%).
It is important to note that many projects only report the number of species to be planted rather than the proportion of the area planted by each species. This means a project can report 100 species but plant 98% of the area with only 1 or 2 species and the remaining 2% with a mix of 98 species. This raises questions about how projects are actually enhancing biodiversity and the strategies they use to achieve it.
69% of the projects are carrying out harvesting activities, but cycle lengths vary according to the project type, ranging from 4 to 45 years for commercial plantations, 7 to 80 for agroforestry, and 15 to 80 for forest restoration projects. Shorter rotation lengths, such as 4 to 7 years in projects using species like Eucalyptus spp, Pinus spp, and Acacia spp challenges the concept of financial additionality in the VCM, as shorter rotations are often motivated by economic purposes, prioritizing economic gains over carbon benefits. This also raises concerns on the risk of non-permanence, as frequent harvesting and replanting cycles can lead to more fluctuating carbon stocks, affecting the sustainability of the carbon benefits.
Our analysis highlights the need for more transparency and standardization in the documentation of projects. While registered projects often include much information publicly available, gaps and inconsistencies remain, as there are no patterns or requirements regarding which and how the data on the technical itinerary should be reported. This issue is even more pronounced in monitoring reports, where the measurement of various parameters is not always available or clearly described.
As the Voluntary Carbon Market continues to grow rapidly, the clear and thorough documentation of project activities becomes increasingly important. Understanding the diverse practices of ARR projects helps ensuring their success and sustainability. By sharing insights and best practices, we can better support the development of effective and impactful ARR projects, contributing significantly to global climate change mitigation efforts.
At hummingbirds, we do our part, by supporting high-quality projects, with biodiversity and social positive impacts, and we prioritize transparent, complete and up-to-date project documentation. In terms of biodiversity, for example, we promote the use of a mix of native species and longer rotation lengths when harvesting takes place. This is the case of Mount Kei Reforestation, our ARR project in Uganda, which aims to implement sustainable forest management in 14,000 ha with teak under long harvesting rotation (minimum 30 years), while supporting the restoration and natural regeneration of 28,000 ha of degraded land using a range of native species.
Stay tuned for the next post!
