From Forest Biomass to Carbon Trading

The role of forest biomass is now greater due to its ability to cope with global warming. Facts prove that forest cover decreases have caused climate change and various disasters such as flood, landslide, drought, extreme weather, and others. Efforts to address climate change have been made by the international community through greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction programs with avoided deforestation and forest degradation through the afforestation/reforestation clean development mechanism (A/R CDM), reducing emission from deforestation and degradation (REDD+), joint implementation (JI), and voluntary carbon market (VCM) schemes. These programs are closely related with carbon trading. Carbon markets need a unit of trade. For carbon, this is one ton of greenhouse gas emissions expressed as carbon dioxide equivalents (tCO 2 e). That is why measurement of forest biomass is very important. Methods to estimate forest biomass from models, inventory, remote sensing data, and geographical information system are being developed, evaluated, and demonstrated at several pilot regions in the world. Carbon markets are believed to be effective and efficient mechanisms in providing these financing sources. In carbon markets, prices are decisive in generating carbon credits. Higher carbon prices will cause more carbon credits to be generated. Nevertheless, carbon trading from REDD+ is found to be a concern especially for developing countries that is the risk of leakage and non-permanence. This chapter aims to inform the importance of measuring forest biomass as it is used as the basis for carbon accounting on carbon trading.