The impacts of climate change are here and now — and no one knows this better than America’s forest landowners. They see every day how climate change poses increasingly severe risks to their operations amid drought, wildfire, insects and disease, and invasive species. Given that private forest owners manage over half of our country’s forests, their stewardship holds the key to whether we can maintain forest health and resilience in a changing climate and sustain the powerful natural climate solution that America’s forests and forest products provide.

Let’s be clear: America’s forest landowners have a great track record of sustainable forestry. That’s how America’s forests are currently capturing and storing an amount of carbon equal to 16 percent of U.S. emissions. The question is how our forests can do even more while facing growing threats from climate change itself.

That’s why America’s forest landowners need our support, resources and innovative solutions, from both the public and private sector alike. With the right financial incentives, tools and technical assistance, these land stewards will be able to more readily deliver rigorous climate-smart forestry that can increase the amount of carbon captured in U.S. forests and better keep that carbon safely stored in trees, soils and forest products.

To meet this need, in early 2021, the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) convened the Farm and Forest Carbon Solutions Task Force, which I was proud to join representing American Forests, the nation’s oldest forest conservation nonprofit. Together, this extraordinary group of experts from across the agriculture and forestry sectors brought our perspectives to a problem that unites us all: how can we provide practical, viable solutions to the barriers that prevent climate-smart practices in agriculture and forestry alike.

Today, the BPC unveiled the final report of the Task Force’s recommendations — offering a roadmap of private and public sector strategies that is ground-truthed by a panel of scientific and technical experts. These recommendations show how smart public policy and private markets can help achieve our climate goals through the land sector while spurring local economies and protecting resilient landscapes for the long-term.

The Task Force developed a set of guiding principles aimed to ensure our work would connect for landowners and continue to achieve bipartisan support. We agreed:

1. Voluntary, incentive-based conservation works
2. Solutions must support the needs of landowners, including economic viability
3. We must center partnership and collaboration to address individual constraints and priorities
4. We must incorporate accountability and transparency in the tracking and quantifying of natural climate solutions’ benefits

These guiding principles were applied to 24 recommendations outlined in the report, grouped within six themes:

1. Expand existing conservation programs. The conservation programs authorized through the farm bill work, but to maximize their ability to deliver on climate, they need greater investment and more focused linkage to climate goals. They also need process improvements in tracking progress and fostering innovation, including how USDA funding can create and gain leverage from carbon finance.
2. Address technical support and workforce needs. Adopting climate-smart practices is about ‘how’ and ‘who’.Our land stewards need local expertise on the ground with them, developing plans for their landscapes to achieve these goals, as well as tools and data that match current needs and fully leverage current technologies. This includes recruiting private-sector partners who can help USDA and Extension offices provide greater climate-smart practice implementation training and information to our landowners and operators. Cutting across all of these needs is the imperative to make access to programs more equitable, addressing historic inequities with socially disadvantaged and underrepresented tribal producers and landowners. We can do so by setting goals and benchmarks for adoption among these groups and investing in education, workforce development and scholarship programs.
3. Strengthen voluntary carbon markets. When considering the economic viability of climate-smart practice adoption, carbon markets, corporate supply-chain initiatives and other similar private-sector efforts offer huge potential leverage. We need targeted legislation and partnerships that will improve the integrity of these voluntary markets and reduce barriers to entry. The Task Force recommends using the Commodity Credit Corporation to pilot practice adoption and explore new models for landowner-led efforts, leveraging carbon markets and supply chain initiatives. But also public-private efforts can develop the infrastructure, insurance and structured finance products that together help improve the transparency and viability of these market opportunities.
4. Develop new finance and insurance instruments. Our land stewards are often early adopters of climate-smart practices, and their foresight and commitment to these practices should be rewarded through one-time payments. Equally important is the need to develop strategies for overcoming barriers related to landownership and succession that often preclude climate-oriented land managers from implementing the practices they know to be best. Adoption of a tax credit for carbon sequestration could provide a powerful incentive and bring the same financial incentives common to technological approaches like carbon capture and storage to the natural climate solutions arena.
5. Enhance carbon storage and climate resilience of farm and forest lands. We know the power of trees to store carbon and make our landscapes more resilient, and we know reforestation on a landscape-scale is a path forward to advancing climate resiliency. But we must get the scientific details right. For example, the way we reforest the rapidly increasing area in the U.S. severely burned by wildfire is the first step in preventing the next one. This entails using a deeply science-based approach to tree species, genetics and planting techniques, all informed by climate science. It will take all hands on deck and an all-of-government approach to increase wildfire resilience in this way, and we face diverse barriers to scale, such as seed collection and nursery capacity. Given the effects of a warming climate in expanding the ranges of pests, diseases, invasive species, drought and wildfire, it is crucial that we modernize and expand public and private seed collections and tree nurseries to provide tree stock that is matched with resilient reforestation.
6. Foster farm and forest-based climate innovation. One of the greatest barriers to climate-smart practice uptake are the upfront costs associated with implementation. We need to make natural climate solutions cheaper and easier to implement through expanded research and development (R&D) collaboration and investments in both the public and private sectors. Siloed efforts across research, development and commercialization must be better integrated to maintain a commitment to advancing these technological solutions and the market opportunities they can offer for land managers. Perhaps most significantly, we should strengthen this R&D and commercialization pathway for emerging markets for innovative wood products and better integrate them into USDA programs, federal materials procurement, and manufacturer incentives.

As we move into implementation of the landmark Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, our forests are better equipped for climate resiliency than they have been in recent memory. This enacted legislation has $8.6 billion for forest-climate actions, from wildfire risk reduction to reforestation.

It’s a good start, but with the 2023 Farm Bill on the horizon, there is more to be done to position our forests and farms in the fight against climate change, and we don’t have a moment to wait. This BPC Task Force report is future-looking, as opposed to how we’ve done things, and so it also considers players and approaches previously untapped by current legislation.

The Task Force’s approach also makes sure not to overlook the many capacities we already have, thanks to current forest policy. While new programs and new federal investments will be needed, our existing federal programs to support great forestry on private lands definitely work — we just need to better align them for climate impact and benefit.

The BPC Farm and Forest Carbon Solutions Task Force is demonstrating once again that America really is “One Nation Under Trees,” with a strong consensus that investing in our forest landowners pays the nation back many times over in diverse environmental, social and economic benefits. Lawmakers should embrace this balanced portfolio approach to putting our forests and forest products to work on climate — our forest landowners are ready to lead the way.