Foresta Capital

Foresta seeks a triple bottom line: financial, environmental and social. It believes that its unique business model enhances synergies. The company will focus on deforested and degraded lands whose agricultural productivity is marginal but whose potential for long term forestry is high. The company’s mosaic of commercial tree stands interlaced with corridors of restoration zones with native species will simulate a natural forest, gradually restoring land and ecosystem functions. Foresta believes that its project design must tie together social and environmental sustainability. For example, creation of local employment and associated incomes will contribute to poverty alleviation. In turn, enhanced livelihoods relieve pressure of forestlands due to over-exploitation by local communities in search of fuelwood or virgin soils. Likewise, by aligning the interests of communities to forestry projects, the risk of unauthorized cutting is reduced and carbon stocks (and offset revenues) are safeguarded.

Greenhouse-Gas Emissions in 2000, by Source

Carbon Sequestration: About one fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) are the result of deforestation and degradation.¹ Trees not only store vast amounts of carbon dioxide, but forests emit a beneficial chemical that helps clouds form over forests. Enhanced cloud cover plays an important role in reflecting sunlight back into the atmosphere, producing a strong cooling effect. The pie chart below summarizes the major sources of GHGs with deforestation captured in the land use category. Since 1950 deforestation has released an estimated 120 giga-tonnes of CO₂. Many complex forces contribute to deforestation in the tropics, and these can be broken down into the several land-use shifts.

Causes of Tropical Deforestation, 2000-2005

Source: Mongabay.com

The Stern Review, one of the most significant and widely read studies on climate change, concludes, “Planting new forests (afforestation and reforestation) could save at least an additional 1 GtCO₂/yr, at a cost estimated at around $5 - 15/tCO₂. An IPCC report in 2000 estimated a technical potential of 4 - 6 GtCO₂/yr from the planting of new forests alone between 1995 and 2050, 70% of which would come from tropical countries.”² Forests are therefore indispensable in strategies to address global warming. Furthermore, due to fewer energy inputs to produce, sustainable timber is less carbon intensive as a building material relative to concrete, plastic and steel, and an energy source when compared to fossil fuels.

The Link between Greenhouse Gases and Climate Change

Source: Stern Review, p. 8.