A scientist has resigned from the World Resources Institute amid disagreement over how to tally forest carbon in accounting rules that are under development. Those rules, which are being drafted by Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHG Protocol) — a global standard-setting body overseen in part by the non-profit — will shape how companies in the forest industry report their carbon footprints.
"As technical director, my charge is to ensure the scientific integrity of WRI's work related to land use," Searchinger said. "Because developments with the Protocol undermine that integrity in both substance and process with large potential consequences, and because I was unable to correct them, I have resigned."
The World Resources Institute confirmed his resignation.
Danny Cullenward, a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania's Kleinman Center for Energy Policy,
The resignation comes as the group deals with another battle over potential changes to how businesses report their emissions from electricity they purchase. Earlier this year, a group of large companies, including Apple and Amazon,
The argument centers on two competing approaches to calculate carbon stores and emissions from forests.
Both approaches seek to account for how forests absorb, store and release carbon, but they differ in how those changes should be attributed. Activity-based accounting seeks to distinguish changes caused by humans from those resulting from natural processes. The managed land proxy approach instead generally treats any changes on managed forest land as the result of human activity.
Some experts have raised concerns that managed land proxy would allow companies to essentially double count carbon removals and take credit for those occurring naturally, regardless of their business operations.
"We are extremely opposed to the application of [managed land proxy] in the Greenhouse Gas Protocol because it will result in the opposite of what it tries to do, which is climate change mitigation," said Miguel Mendonça Reis Brandão, who served on the body's technical working group for forest carbon accounting and is associate professor of industrial ecology and life cycle assessment at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden. "It's counterproductive."
A spokesperson for the GHG Protocol said the matter is still under review. This is the first time the group will publish guidance on forest carbon accounting; it is accepting comments through February and won't make a decision until after its standards board evaluates the feedback. Until then, companies can use either accounting approach but must be transparent, the representative said.
The issue has split experts and stakeholders involved in the GHG Protocol, with most academics supporting the first approach and most representatives of industry the second, reporting by Bloomberg and SourceMaterial found.
Of the hundreds of groups and individuals that have submitted comments regarding the two methodologies, the majority of scientists and non-governmental organizations either expressed support for activity-based accounting or criticism of managed land proxy. A much smaller number of scientists wrote in favor of managed land proxy, along with forest industry professionals.
Charles Canham, a senior scientist emeritus at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies who sat on the technical working group, said that "there were basically scientists on one side, forest products industry on the other side."
Supporters of the managed land proxy approach
Nathan Truitt, an executive vice president at the nonprofit American Forest Foundation who was on the working group, said the approach won't lead to over-claiming of removals. "You don't want any actor who has a climate goal to be reporting removals from the atmosphere without acknowledging or somehow taking into account the fact that some of those forest-based removals really have nothing to do with their corporate action," Truitt said. "That is absolutely not what will happen if we adopt [managed land proxy plus]."
Truitt last year sent a complaint to the GHG Protocol in which he expressed concern that the working group "established a biased and unfair dynamic" of scientists supporting one approach and industry the other. He asked that academics who back managed land proxy be added to the working group.
The nature of the complaint, Truitt told Bloomberg, was "not about the scientists on the panel" but about whether or not the "full breadth of scientific opinion" was represented.
Backers of each approach submitted proposals to the standard-setter. Neither proposal, the spokesperson said, "represented a fully developed or pilot-tested methodology" and its standards board "identified limitations" in both.
The board commissioned four independent experts who pointed to the need for more work on the proposals, according to the spokesperson.
Forestry and forest product companies tested managed land proxy in
Jennifer Skene, global forest policy director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, says managed land proxy was never intended to be used for private sector accounting.
"This was an imperfect solution that was developed to account for emissions at a country level," said Skene. "It's not an accurate reflection of the actual carbon emissions tied to products that are derived from forests."
The revised approach includes several "safeguards" to ensure it would be "applied responsibly," according to Vaughan Andrews, a senior program manager for sustainability at Weyerhaeuser Co. who co-authored the managed land proxy plus proposal.
Melissa Gallant, senior advisor on climate at the Nature Conservancy, also backs the managed land proxy plus approach, calling it a "solution that can be implemented at scale." Gallant, Skene and Andrews were all members of the forest working group.
Gallant said the approach is "grounded in science." Brandão disagrees.
"It's kind of greenwashing, to be honest," he said. "There's no other way of putting it."
