Carbon Forestry Projects in Developing Countries: Legal Issues and Tools

By Patsy Davis

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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, a climate control regime that mandates GHG emission quotas for developed countries. Whether Kyoto will become binding is uncertain but some form of international climate control is likely to occur in the near future. 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.