Private Philanthropy: Be the Game Changer for Family Forests and the Planet

Beyond giving us something beautiful to look at, forests provide a great deal of benefits to the planet – benefits we need to protect if we want to avoid climate catastrophe.  

Globally, forests capture and store approximately 2.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide annually– a third of the carbon released by burning fossil fuels – and house 80% of the world’s terrestrial biodiversity. In the United States alone, forests and forest products are our most significant terrestrial carbon sink, covering more than 750 million acres of land and sequestering 866 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually, or nearly 16% of the country’s total annual emissions. If we are effective in maximizing our investment in nature, we could protect and advance the many environmental and social co-benefits forests bring, all while increasing carbon stocks by 139 gigatons – 61% of the potential positive impacts of increased forest growth across forested, urban, and agricultural areas. 

But we can’t do this alone. In the United States, there is an unsung conservation hero that holds the key to meaningful change: family forest owners. By providing the largest ownership group of all forests in the U.S. with the support they need, they could maximize their climate potential to capture and store one billion tons of carbon by the year 2050.  

One of the most critical issues preventing family forest owners from doing more to both improve the health of their forests and benefit the climate is money.

It costs money to implement new practices that might lead to a short-term loss of revenue but increase the health and value of their woods in the long-term. Right now, there are only a few ways to make money from forests to help these landowners continue to reinvest in their lands, with timber and recreation as major motivators. These are essential motivators but alone are not enough to finance the conservation actions we need in these woods and that landowners need to keep their forests as forests.  

Stewarding 39% of all forested land in the country, family forest owners are a critical player in the conversation of our forests and mitigating climate change. Sadly, these landowners are far too often locked out of the opportunity to maximize the climate, conservation, and social potential their land holds. With 33% of family forest owners falling below the U.S. median income, and only one in five having received any formal forest management advice, this community is often left with very limited options.  

One critical financial mechanism to meet the needs of these landowners is the voluntary carbon market (VCM). The VCM not only brings private capital into local communities but also helps small landowners in bolstering rural economies and can also mean increased access to technical and financial support to care for their forests. And while the market has massive potential to unlock access to private finance for landowners, many barriers remain that prohibit this community from maximizing its conservation and financial benefits, including high upfront costs, market complexity, and stalled corporate trust and buy-in. 

While traditional conservation funding – providing grants directly to communities or community organizations that facilitate sustainable conservation activities – is still critical to reaching our national and global climate goals, it is no longer sufficient to meet the needs of family forest owners and the ongoing climate emergency. If we are going to meet our global climate goal of remaining under 1.5 degrees Celsius, grants must be used alongside other innovative and sustained financing mechanisms.      

So how can we unlock market access for family forest owners to maximize their climate change fighting potential? One key piece of the puzzle: upfront philanthropic investment. 

Upfront financing catalyzes the climate impact that carbon projects like the Family Forest Carbon Program create for rural landowners and their forests. Unlike traditional conservation funding, initial philanthropic investments in projects operating within the VCM serve as a springboard for increased corporate investment into natural climate solutions, creating a self-sustaining business model in the long term. Early philanthropic support in VCM projects builds trust in investment communities, stabilizing and increasing returns. For every dollar of upfront philanthropic funding in these projects, approximately $7 of corporate investment is unlocked – a game changer for rural America.  

Upfront philanthropic investment in carbon projects like FFCP can be used to fund a wide range of projects and other critical initiatives: 

• Research, science and technology, and program design that increase project quality and carbon credit integrity   

• Measuring, monitoring, reporting, and verifying mechanisms (MMRV)   

• Expansion of expert forester capacity to provide more technical support to landowners  

• Reaching historically underserved and hard-to-reach landowners  

In effect, these funds can still be directed at what many philanthropies are funding, but projects that leverage the VCM can make these funds go further and get more money to the ground for real and lasting impact.  

The results of leveraging philanthropic funding to mobilize private investment in natural climate solutions are catalytic, including more landowners overall engaged in active, sustainable forest management, greater conservation and climate impact for the same amount of private philanthropic investment, and advancement in science and innovation that create more sustainable and effective conservation nationwide.  

Upfront philanthropic investment can take many forms, through both traditional and more innovative funding models, including one-off grants to carbon projects to expand their support of rural landowners fast, sustained funding for advocacy efforts to create the enabling policy conditions to expand natural climate solutions through scaling the VCM, and debt-alleviating grants that further de-risk private investor returns through lowering a carbon project’s interest rate payments on existing loans or bonds. All three of these avenues help direct dollars back into the field, allowing projects to reach and support even more landowners in need of the support to care for their woodlands.  

If we are going make a sustained impact that helps reach the planet’s climate goals, we need philanthropic support of the VCM to act as a springboard for maximizing investment in nature. Philanthropic capital is patient capital, in that it can afford a lower return on investment. Taking the first step encourages private investors to come on board. Philanthropic donors: you are an essential part of us advancing all this important work together. Let’s make this market work – for rural Americans, our forests, and the planet.