Trees thrive on carbon dioxide, and families independently own most trees in the U.S. Why not reward those families for reducing carbon in the atmosphere?
That’s the thinking behind the Family Forest Carbon Program, and Alabama’s Vulcan Materials Co., the nation’s largest producer of construction aggregates, will provide funding for the FFCP’s pilot program, which begins in California and Pennsylvania.
Birmingham-based Vulcan Materials Company has joined the American Forest Foundation and the Nature Conservancy in supporting this new effort to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
The FFCP incentivizes individual and family forest owners to adopt forest management practices that improve forest health.
Families own 290 million acres of America’s forests, more than state or federal governments and the forest industry, and many face cost as a barrier in managing their forestland. These forests represent a landmass the size of California and Texas combined.
Vulcan will provide funding for the FFCP to expedite family forest owner outreach and enable family forest owners to take action on their land in pilot program.
The FFCP represents a new approach to climate change mitigation that taps into the carbon storage potential of family-owned forestland while creating a new market and source of income for the families that dedicate time and effort to their forest management.
Research published by The Nature Conservancy and 21 other institutions in Science Advances demonstrates that nature-based solutions, like the FFCP, can help absorb one-fifth of the carbon pollution produced in the United States. This is equivalent to the emissions from every U.S. passenger vehicle.
