King County Executive Dow Constantine said “Thanks to collaborations between King County, towns, and nonprofit organizations, our area is now a participant in the biggest sale of urban forest carbon credits in the history of the United States. We will be responsible for the management of the newly guarded urban forests in order to ensure that they continue to remove carbon from the atmosphere, make a contribution to the purification of both the air and the water, and produce additional open green space in which individuals, families, and communities can congregate.”
In 2018, the county and city jointly bought the land that included the forest. The piece that belonged to the city was rechristened Harvey Manning Park Expansion Area, while the section that belonged to the county was included in Cougar Mountain Regional Wildland Park. City Forest Credits, a Seattle-based charity that oversees the management of a carbon registry in many metropolitan regions, was in charge of the transaction that was revealed this week.
The proceeds from the sale of the carbon credits will be used to help finance forest management initiatives such as the King County Forest Carbon Program. This scheme is a component of the county’s Land Conservation Initiative, which is an attempt to preserve current tree canopies and also construct additional parks, boardwalks, and outdoor venues. Credits acquired by Regen Network Development from CFC were issued as part of the transaction that was disclosed on Friday. It is quite possible that RND will trade those credits to many other purchasers.
Emission-offset strategies have demonstrated that forest carbon credits as an alluring method for individuals, enterprises, and governments to nullify or thwart the consumption of fossil fuels by making an investment in the natural gifts of trees, plants, and soil to effectively remove carbon, or in initiatives that fund the conservation, safeguards, or restoration of natural systems. This can be accomplished through investing in the innate ability of trees, plants, and soil to effectively remove carbon.
Back in May of 2019, King County was the first municipal government in the nation to begin offering forest carbon offsets to its residents. The county has committed to preventing the emission of over 100,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide into the environment over the first five years of the project. If the county had not protected this carbon dioxide, it would have been discharged into the air. When Microsoft decided to purchase all of the credits from the program’s initial year, the software giant became the firm’s first domestic client.
King County Forest Carbon Program Manager Kathleen Wolf pointed out “You should realize that this is all very fresh to us.”
This initiative and the 46-acre area in Issaquah are two of the most significant emissions reduction initiatives that King County is in charge of supervising.
Wolf said “Between the two of them, we’ve been on a pretty big learning curve too, simply trying to acquire a better understanding of what is required to get these initiatives up and operating, how the selling of credits might help us build relationships with, in particular, local consumers who then become partakers. This has been our primary focus.”
The concept of carbon credits and emission reductions, although potentially exciting, may also be mind-bogglingly complicated. Despite this, she was successful in distilling it into an useful mantra.
“Take care of the forest. Produce the credits for the video. Get rid of them. Put that money toward the preservation of further forestland.”