Supporting EPA in its efforts to develop effective policies and programs to advance the widespread use of climate-change mitigation technologies, especially in developing countries and economies in transition, IES continues several activities related to forestry in developing countries and climate change, including:

There is a growing acceptance that the environmental benefits of forests extend beyond traditional ecological benefits and include the mitigation of climate change. Interest in forestry mitigation activities has led to the inclusion of forestry practices at the project level in international agreements. Climate change activities place new demands on participating institutions to set baselines, establish additionality, determine leakage, ensure permanence, and monitor and verify a project's greenhouse gas benefits. These issues are common to both forestry and other types of mitigation projects. They demand empirical evidence to establish conditions under which such projects can provide sustained long term global benefits. Follow this link to a collection of case studies on this topic.

• Exploring the potential and cost for reducing GHG emissions from forestry activities and/or sequestering carbon in developing countries.
• Developing a global model of forestry mitigation options and carbon emissions based on statistics from multilateral and national institutions.
  
• Integration of LULUCF sector in the global models for assessing the consequences of mitigation actions.
  
• Development of project-level tools for the assessment of socio-economic impacts of forestry mitigation projects.
  
• Examination of ways to ameliorate some key concerns with carbon accounting; baselines, permanence and leakage, that have slowed the penetration of mitigation projects, as well as assessing the non-GHG impacts of mitigation activities.
  
• Facilitating exchange of ideas between stakeholders in some developing countries on how to translate the research findings into effective national mitigation policies and implementation strategies

Presentations

• Role of land use change and forestry in the global carbon cycle
• Investment and actions to reduce deforestation
• Climate change mitigation: Role of forests and forestry projects