Growing forests on abandoned agricultural land could stimulate the development of a carbon offset market in Russia, according to the article "Reporting instead of compensation" by Nikolai Shmatkov, Director of FSC Russia, this article was published in the current issue of the "Lesnaya Industriya".
“The main limitation of the implementation of forest climate projects in Russia is the baseline for assessing carbon sequestration or emission,” Nikolai Shmatkov notes. “Its rate for Russia is now being discussed and is likely to be set at 2.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year. This is 18% more than all direct and indirect Russian greenhouse gas emissions recorded in 2019, according to the National Greenhouse Gas Inventory Report.
“This figure has been established not on the basis of scientific information, but by administrative procedure: the country lacks up-to-date data on the state of forests on about 85% of the area, that is, almost any figure can be set - it will be difficult to confirm or deny it,” he concluded.
