Exploring Forestry’s Role in Carbon Credits at the European Carbon Farming Summit 2025
Forests are a vital solution to tackling climate change. By improving forest management practices and scaling the improved practices, we can boost the amount of carbon absorbed by forests, while maintaining healthy ecosystems and continuing to sustainably harvest the timber, so it can be used in long-lived wood products and construction for lasting carbon storage.
However, despite its potential, this method is largely overlooked in carbon projects around the world. As a result, carbon certification standards present specific challenges and barriers for forestry that must be addressed to avoid risks such as over- or under-crediting. Carbon certification serves as both an incentive for better management on the ground, and as a reward for the additional complexity introduced with Improved Forest Management (IFM).
So, what are the key barriers and challenges, and what actions are needed to ensure that policies and regulations lay the foundation for successfully scaling up forest carbon finance?
On 4 March 2025, Climate KIC and I4CE co-hosted a panel session entitled: “Low hanging (tree) fruit – reaping forest-based carbon removal potential, identifying challenges and gaps to open doors to forest management solutions” at the 2nd European Carbon Farming Summit in Dublin, Ireland. This 90-minute session brought together a diverse and dynamic panel of stakeholders, including project developers, think tanks, consultancies, and carbon credit buyers.
With 152 participants joining this hybrid event online and in-person, the session acted as a platform for thought-provoking discussions and expert insights, drawing from both the panelists’ own work and recommendations from our previous three Focus Group discussions conducted under INFORMA.
The session began with a diverse panel featuring speakers from ECS Climate Solutions, Carbon Capture Company, Caritas Austria, Anew Climate, Preferred By Nature and Cesefor Foundation. Panelists provided an overview of IFM approaches, including regional case studies that highlighted innovative transitions in silviculture and existing certification frameworks, including the Label Bas Carbone in France, which aims to enhance carbon sequestration through improved forestry practices. They highlighted local differences in forest types, age distribution, management types which require specific approaches to carbon methodologies. For example, baselines can be generic and thus cheaper to measure, but are much more accurate when they’re selected for the local context.
Certification plays a crucial role in ensuring the credibility of forest carbon credits. Following the discussion on the definition of IFM, panelists discussed key certification challenges and best practices, including methodology criteria, strategies to prevent carbon leakage and the role of baselines in ensuring carbon credits accurately reflect the actual additional carbon sequestration achieved through improved forest management practices.
Forest carbon credits can only be effective if supply and demand in the market are properly connected. This requires exploring market dynamics and financing mechanisms to drive demand for high-integrity forestry credits while simultaneously considering the diverse perspectives of buyers, foresters, and landowners. Special attention was given to buyer expectations, the role of temporary credits as they are currently defined in the European Carbon Removals and Carbon Farming regulation, and their broader implications for market attractiveness.
The session concluded with a lively 30-minute interactive Q&A, where both in-person and online participants engaged in discussions. An evening wrap-up session in the plenary allowed the team to focus on specific challenges in more details. Using the interactive feedback tool, Mentimeter, summit participants exchanged insights on two key issues, namely the highly debated topic of baselines, and market opportunities for temporary vs. long-term credits as identified in our session: For this, all conference participants were invited to share their perspectives which further enriched our learnings and will lead to more.
Climate –KIC’s Simeon Max, who co-hosted the session, highlighted the importance of organizing events like this to bring together diverse perspectives:
“The Carbon Farming summit was a key milestone in our ambition to convene diverse voices across the carbon forestry sector to discuss challenges with regulations and the implementation on the ground, and to jointly come up with recommendations specifically on the Carbon Removals and Carbon Farming (CRCF) regulation of the EU and how it can be further improved.”
Attendees explored key challenges and future opportunities in carbon farming, demonstrating a strong interest in continuing the conversation. There was a collective expression of interest in further collaboration, particularly on certification innovation. In response, we extended an invitation to all participants to join the upcoming INFORMA Focus Group discussions on this topic. The findings from these discussions will be published later on the INFORMA website.
Check the recording of the entire session and discussion here: