Measuring the Carbon Content of Forests: The Carbon Measurement Collaborative
…from the William J. Clinton Foundation‘s Clinton Climate Initiative…
“Most developing countries lack the technology and tools to track emissions and estimate forests’ carbon absorption and storage abilities. CCI is helping partner countries design and implement their own National Carbon Accounting System (NCAS), giving unprecedented accounting rigor to national forest inventories, as well as individual projects. By working on a national scale, our approach helps to create a globally accepted system for measuring, monitoring, and verifying the carbon content of forests. This in turn supports the development of international agreements on deforestation, and facilitates countries’ access to carbon markets as well as other sources of investment capital.
“To this end, we have convened the Carbon Measurement Collaborative (CMC), a network of leading scientists and technical experts in forest carbon modeling, land use change monitoring and measurement, and satellite imaging. The CMC has developed a prototype, based on a system originally developed in Australia, which currently is being demonstrated. In each partner country, we aim to build the local capacity – the software, computer hardware, and personnel training – to manage the NCAS independently.
“Partners and participants of the CMC include: the Australian government, Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI), the world’s leading geographical information systems organization, NASA, and other space agencies through the intergovernmental Group on Earth Observations, the Woods Hole Research Center, the H. John Heinz III Center, World Resources Institute, and the Green Belt Movement. We also are engaging with Google and other important technology providers as well as with end users, including members of the financial investment community and negotiators of the post-Kyoto climate treaty, to determine what the system will be able to deliver for their purposes.”
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