One can earn money by felling trees and selling them, but also can earn money by not cutting down trees. In regards of this, people are rewarded for sequestering carbon through community based forest management.
It sounds somewhere unbelievable, but people are growing money from carbon. Saving of forest saves carbon and can earn money. Some community forests in Nepal are earning a huge sum of money by sequestering carbon.
To save carbon in forests, the watershed areas are starting to opt for alternative sources of energy. The users of different community forests have started to make bio-gas, reformed cooking stoves made of iron. As firewood is the main source of energy, switching to alternative energy sources has reduced people’s dependence upon forest resources. They have also started tree plantation in bare community and private lands. There are many more project running out there to assist this sector.
Deforestation often occurs in developing countries like Nepal because of poverty and political instability. The acting projects are trying to address those issues. Payments are being allocated to the communities mainly being based on four criteria – quantity of forest carbon saved above the baseline, number of households of indigenous people and Dalits(minors), the ratio of men and women and number of poor households within the project’s area. All the money are not allocated on the carbon quantity only because the size of population, per hectare forest in different areas and population composition in each area is different from the other. And allocating money on the basis of those four criteria is done to maintain the equity.
Nepal does not have any policy regarding the implementation of carbon trading. If the country opts for carbon trading, then there is a huge possibility of making more money by saving forests.
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