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Forests Can Work to Keep our Planet Cool...
If We Work to Keep The Standing Strong.

The Pacific Forest Trust's Working Forests, Winning Climate campaign aims to harness the power of working forests to deliver scientifically credible and lasting emissions reductions that are essential to sustaining a livable climate. PFT is advancing complementary policy and market initiatives that will put more than 400 million acres of U.S. forestlands to work to combat global warming and help heal our climate.

Forest loss is a primary cause of global warming.

Yet, if properly conserved and managed,
forests can work to keep our planet cool.

Emissions from forest loss and depletion are second only to fossil fuels as the largest source our all carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. At the same time, because forests store carbon and can do so for hundreds of years into the future, forests can also be utilized to help solve our climate crisis.

• By conserving forests, we can protect vast banks of carbon from being lost.

• By managing forests to restore higher carbon levels, forests will take more CO2 out of the atmosphere than they already do today.

• And by restoring forests where they used to exist, higher levels of long-term carbon stores can be achieved.

400 million acres of U.S. forestlands are ready to be put
to work to deliver real and lasting climate benefits.

Working Forests, Winning Climate
Five Point Policy Position

1. Set Regulations & Standards
To restore a more livable climate, the U.S. must adopt regulations with binding emissions reductions goals and clear accounting standards. With a solid regulatory framework in place, market forces can efficiently achieve emissions reductions.

2. Conserve & Manage Forests
Because deforestation and forest depletion have generated nearly half of all excess CO2 in the atmosphere today, forest conservation, restoration and carbon management must be central to U.S. climate strategy.

3. Incentivize Landowners
Forest owners must be rewarded for keeping their forests as forests and managing them – based on rigorous scientific standards – to store more carbon over the long term.

4. Ensure Permanent Reductions
The standards applied to U.S. forests must be consistent with the global standards for fossil fuels and other sectors that call for permanent net reductions in emissions.

5. Achieve Verifiable Additionality
Gains in forest carbon stores and avoided forest-based emissions must be determined by measuring against an objective, consistent performance standard. Emissions reductions must come from activities that are verifiably above and beyond what is already required by federal, state or local law.

Watch PFT President
Laurie Wayburn Testify
Before a Senate Subcommittee About Forests and Climate on YouTube

Read and download
Q&A about the Forest Protocols and their adoption by the California Air Resources Board (PDF)

Read about our model
Van Eck Forest Project
(Link Here)