The Time is Right for a Forest Moonshot in the U.S.

This article by Sacha Spector originally appeared in Ecosystem Marketplace, a Forest Trends Initiative.

Here’s something unexpected: In the midst of a deeply polarizing election, Americans actually seem to agree on solutions to climate change. Recent research from USN4C found that an overwhelming, bipartisan majority of U.S. voters support investing in natural climate solutions, such as reforestation, wildfire management, and land conservation.

This broad-based, popular support is essential, because every credible plan for achieving our national climate goal of a 50-52% emissions reduction by  2030 and net-zero emissions in 2050 relies on reduction of emissions coming from agricultural and forest lands, and a massive increase of natural carbon capture by  trees, grasslands, soils, and wetlands. The good news is our nation’s lands are up to the task. While they already absorb about 13 percent of our country’s emissions each year, studies project that the total net carbon sink from land could be nearly doubled in time for meeting our long-term climate goals.

The science is clear that forests are the key to this success. Reforestation and natural forest management have the greatest maximum mitigation potential of identified natural climate solutions; on private lands alone, they could contribute up to 574 Megatonnes of CO2e annually – equal to nearly 10% of current national emissions. So how do we get there?

What’s Working

A diverse network of government agencies, nonprofits, coalitions and individuals across the forest sector are already making significant progress in scaling natural climate solutions. To take just a small sample:

• Historic investments through the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law have earmarked $1 billion to the U.S. Forest Service and partners for urban and community forestry, $145 million to help forest owners access the emerging voluntary carbon market, and $3.3 billion to reforest burned acres across the country.
• States like California, Massachusetts, Maine, Washington, and Maryland have made forest protection, restoration and management central to their climate action plans.
• Regional projects, like the Sustainable Forestry and African American Land Retention Network that is helping thousands of African American landowners across eight Southern states to implement sustainable forestry practices, are accelerating bottom-up approaches that increase carbon and equity alike.
• Initiatives like the Family Forest Carbon Program – led by the American Forest Foundation and the Nature Conservancy – and the National Indian Carbon Coalition are helping Tribes and family forest owners access the voluntary carbon market, earn income from reforestation and shift to more sustainable forestry.
• Commercial forest owners, new forest start-ups like MAST and New Leaf Climate, and impact investors are crowding in private capital and driving innovation into the sector as it reaches for new scale.

We’re Still Falling Short

Despite this notable progress and strong bipartisan support, it’s clear we’re still dangerously off track for achieving the sort of transformative forest conservation and reforestation effort required. We are continuing to lose forests at an alarming rate, and the US Forest service projects we could lose up to 12 million acres of forest by midcentury due to sprawl and climate-driven wildfires, pests, and species range shifts. Reforestation on public and private lands is lagging significantly behind both the need and potential. Meanwhile, lack of public incentives and questions about the integrity of carbon markets, among other barriers, has hampered private sector investment in these efforts.

A Moonshot for Forests

There is only one solution: a climate-smart moonshot for forests in the U.S. that encompasses protection, restoration, and improved management for climate and biodiversity outcomes. By shifting tens of millions of acres into more resilient and biodiverse forest ecosystems, we can increase our forests’ ability to absorb carbon by 70 percent and help the nation meet our 2030 and midcentury net-zero targets. In tangible terms, a moonshot for forests would need to achieve the following forest-climate mission:

• Steward the nation’s federal and state-owned forests with climate-informed principles and practices that increase carbon sequestration and storage, biodiversity values, and sustainable forest products.
• Shift 50 percent of privately owned forest lands into similar stewardship through climate-smart forestry and reforestation practices.
• Increase the national rate of reforestation from 1 million to 4 million acres per year, to achieve 100 million acres of new forest cover by 2050.
• Avoid the loss of up to 12 million acres of forest to sprawling development patterns and poor land management decisions, focusing on the most at-risk, carbon-dense, and biodiversity-rich places.

By its very definition, a moonshot is an expression of ambition–a willingness to take on a massive challenge with clarity about the destination but uncertainty in the path to success. A forest-climate moonshot is no exception. We know these efforts lack sufficient public funding and private finance; technical challenges, like how to precisely measure and verify the impact of forests’ carbon sequestration, complicate policy-setting and hinders investment. And, despite national bipartisan support, diverse communities and forest stakeholders across regions must buy into the mission and practice of forest protection, reforestation and climate-smart management.

Still, we believe these barriers are surmountable. I’m encouraged by transformative progress in the clean energy sector, changes boosted by creative and comprehensive federal investment and private sector entrepreneurship. The same can and must be accomplished for forests and other natural climate solutions.

There is no time to waste. The Doris Duke Foundation is committed to working with the entire forest community and using our full philanthropic toolkit –our capital resources, our creativity, our voice, and our reputation–to turn this moonshot for forests into a reality.

There is so much to do and delivering forest climate solutions at scale is only achievable through collaboration and coordination. Together, we’ll need to power the forests-for-climate movement in new and bigger ways, invest in new science and tools, and translate these findings into comprehensive policies and innovative public-private investments.

Now is the time to harness the bi-partisan popularity of these essential solutions, to build on the amazing work that is already underway, and to forge a new national consensus on how to mobilize forests for climate.

Sacha Spector is Program Director for the Environment at the Doris Duke Foundation.