Carbon credits-An Afforestation project for Carbon Credit, Beijing, China
Carbon credit is relatively a new term which relates to environment, climate change, and Green house gases emission. It is a general term for any tradable certificate or permit carrying the legal right to emit one tone of carbon or carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e).
The synonym of carbon credit is carbon market. This is an international attempt to reduce the rate of Greenhouse gases through afforestation all over the world. This is just another big approach of trading carbon to reduce Greenhouse gases (GHGs) emission, where GHGs is capped and process to market to allocate among the source of regulated organizations.
Recently, I have visited a carbon forest on May, 28th 2011, very close to Beijing, China. This is one of the three carbon affrorestation project in China and it’s very close to Beijing city.
According to the guideline for afforestation for carbon credits, the project fulfill the basic principle, following biological protection, creating ecological forests, placing right trees and right place, following technical requirement and planning for maintaining forest cover at least 20 years. The afforestation project is maintaining the guideline for selection of site and the field survey and planning was done accurately.
The species were selected according to the guidelines of carbon credits, where all species are local, have good tolerance of unfavorable environments, and have ability to sequestrate co2 and a complete mixed forest. The afforestation was done keeping original vegetation intact and management is carrying out in a manner to avoid C emission.
As the affrestation project for carbon credits was started in 2008, after 3 years, the present condition of the forest is very good. The survival rate of the planted species is very high and all species already adapted with the original species.
From my point of view, I hope after twenty years the forest will be able to earn complete carbon credits providing valuable environmental service.
