To use CO2 credits as a financing tool to restore and preserve tropical forests the size of the Netherlands; two million hectares by 2030. That ambition can only rely on the 30 years of tropical forestry experience of co-founder Paul Hol, says Michel Schuurman.
Schuurman and his team are pushing Treevive to make that combination between tropical forest management and available carbon credits. “It’s a funding question, especially for newly planted tropical forests. You can only apply for carbon credits for this kind of forest after about five years. That’s a gap in time that needs to be bridged, a gap that calls for ‘slow money’. At the same time, there is urgency. Deforestation accounts for 8 % of CO2 emissions worldwide. If we do nothing, that is only going to increase. We know that ten million hectares of forest are lost every year, including by increasing forest fires in Europe. But we also know that forests can contribute more than 20 percent to preventing further global warming. And besides their importance for our climate, forests are home to more than half of all land-bound animals and provide nearly 800 million people with their daily necessities.”
Schuurman is therefore pleased with the cooperation with the development bank FMO – Dutch entrepreneurial development bank, which also has a very ambitious goal: half a billion dollars should be invested in tropical forests by 2030.
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