Scientists measuring the health and caliper of the largest trees on earth, the giant Sequoia of Sequoia National Forest in Tulare County, California. The larger trees are over 250 feet high and up to 102 feet in circumference at the base, more than the distance between home plate and second base in a baseball field.

Credit: Mike Nichols

Proforestation

Call to action:

Protect existing forests and allow degraded forests to recover and mature to their full potential as a critical solution for carbon sequestration and biodiversity loss.

Proforestation is the practice of protecting existing intact forests or allowing forests to recover naturally if they have been degraded. Older and larger trees have high rates of carbon sequestration, while supporting native biodiversity, water and air quality, and flood and erosion control. Logging, mining, disease, and wildfires have led to the loss of over a third of Earth’s original forests, often resulting in land degradation. Preserving existing forests and letting them grow to their full ecological potential would sequester significantly more carbon dioxide than newly planted trees. Proforestation is immediate, effective, low cost, and can be utilized in all types of forests. Protection of forests can take many forms, including federal legislation, administrative action, conservation easements, deforestation-free supply chains, and Indigenous land rights.

Nexus Rating System^Beta

Solutions to the climate emergency have unique social and environmental effects, positive and negative. To develop a broader understanding of the solutions in Nexus, we rate each solution on five criteria.

Sources for each Nexus are graded numerically (-3 through 10), and the average is displayed as a letter grade. You can explore each source in depth by clicking “view sources” below. For more information, see our Nexus Ratings page.

Proforestation

8.60

0.00

9.91

9.00

Social Justice
Culture
Women
Biodiversity
Carbon

Reference	Social Justice	Culture	Women	Biodiversity	Carbon
Old growth forests and large old trees as critical organisms connecting ecosystems and human health. A review	8.0			10.0
Why old-growth forests matter				10.0
Old growth forests and large old trees as critical organisms connecting ecosystems and human health. A review	8.0	9.0		10.0
Importance of Indigenous Peoples lands for the conservation of Intact Forest Landscapes	9.0	9.0		9.0
Sink or swim: How Indigenous and community lands can make or break nationally determined contributions	9.0	10.0		10.0
Giving Indigenous people land rights significantly reduces deforestation says UN report	9.0	10.0		10.0
Titling indigenous communities protects forests in the Peruvian Amazon	9.0	10.0		10.0
How Returning Lands to Native Tribes Is Helping Protect Nature	9.0	10.0		10.0
Why Keeping Mature Forests Intact Is Key to the Climate Fight				10.0
What does Proforestation Look Like?				10.0
Proforestation separates people from forests	3.0	3.0
Intact Forests in the United States: Proforestation Mitigates Climate Change and Serves the Greatest Good	7.0			10.0
The best way to save forests? Legally recognize Indigenous lands	7.0	7.0
Scientific Evidence Points to Indigenous Peoples Forest Management as Key to Climate Mitigation	7.0	9.0
Empowering Indigenous Peoples to Protect Forests	8.0	9.0
Integrated global assessment of the natural forest carbon potential					9.0
	7.8	8.6	0.0	9.9	9.0

Action Items

Individuals

Learn about the threats to intact forests and why they need to be protected. William Moomaw coined the term proforestation to spotlight the effectiveness of older and middle-aged forests in sequestering atmospheric carbon. Intact old-growth forests are generally ones that have developed over long periods of time without disturbance. They comprise nearly 40 percent of the global forest area and span every continent except Antarctica. Canada, Brazil, and Russia contain over half of the total. Intact old-growth forests are important because:

They continue to sequester large quantities of carbon throughout their lives in their bodies and roots, with the largest 2–3 percent of trees accounting for between 33–46 percent of aboveground carbon storage in forests.
They are more resilient to drought, have deeper root systems, and contain more biomass than young forests.
Old-growth forests are essential for ecosystems and human health. They support a greater diversity of plants, animals, and soil than younger forests, produce cleaner water, and host complex fungal networks that relay messages between trees of different species.
Over a third of the world’s remaining intact forest landscapes exist on Indigenous-owned or managed land. Indigenous stewardship of these forests has been linked to increased biodiversity and reduced greenhouse gas emissions.
Only 12 percent of old-growth intact forests are protected, leaving the rest exposed to timber harvesting, logging, hydroelectric projects, and mining.
European demand for wood pellets for energy has caused the widespread destruction of old-growth forests in the United States and Europe. Wood-pellet harvesting sites, which are disproportionately located near Black, low-income communities in the southeastern U.S., are leading to severe health consequences in neighboring communities.
Proforestation is low-tech and low-cost. It is cheaper to protect trees and let them continue to grow than to plant new trees (see Afforestation Nexus).

Take action to protect forests. It is important to pressure governments and companies to protect intact old-growth forests and halt extractive activities. Examples of how individuals can get involved include:

Join a campaign. Campaigns can help ensure forest protection. The Climate Forests Campaign was part of a successful effort to pressure President Biden to protect mature forests on federal lands from logging. Petitions like this example call for EU member states to end subsidies for burning forest wood and to prioritize forest protection. Other campaigns and organizations are listed in Key Players below.
Support local movements. Support for local movements can be critical to preserving old-growth forests in places with limited government action. The Podáali Fund and the Apiwtxa International Congress are helping ensure Brazil’s forests remain intact.
Volunteer to monitor forest health. Citizen scientists play an important role in tracking forest health. Here are examples of citizen scientist projects in the U.S., Canada, South Africa, and Australia.
Donate to land-rights funds. Despite research showing that forests are healthiest on Indigenous land, only a small percentage of global funding goes to Indigenous-led projects. Supporting grassroots funds, such as the Chepkitale Indigenous People Development Project, helps Indigenous peoples protect their rights and their forests.

Buy recycled or sustainably produced paper products. Consumers can help mitigate their impact on intact forests by supporting companies whose products are recycled or produced sustainably. Learn more about responsible paper packaging here. See Boreal Forests Nexus and Palm Oil Nexus for more action items.

Who Gives A Crap, Green Forest, and Natural Value products use 100 percent recycled materials and score highest for sustainability on the NRDC’s Buyer’s Guide to the Sustainability of At-Home Tissue Products.
Look for products that contain the Rainforest Alliance seal of approval, which indicates that a product was produced by farmers and foresters who have met third-party auditing standards regarding their impact on forest health and climate change.

Groups

Public and Private Landowners

Give land to an Indigenous Landback movement. There is a movement to return culturally and ecologically significant lands to Indigenous communities, called Landback. These lands play a vital role in both furthering environmental justice and protecting forests from encroachment.

To learn more about land donations, read this land reparations toolkit, past examples of land rematriation, and interviews with Indigenous organizers of landback movements in Canada, the U.S., and New Zealand.
The Native Land Conservancy is an Indigenous-led conservation group that works to restore land to its original state.
The Shuumi Land Tax is an example of a voluntary annual contribution that individuals and organizations can make to support rematriation work. Read more about voluntary land taxes here.

Consider a conservation easement. Conservation easements are voluntary legal agreements between landowners and a land trust or government entity. They outline permanent restrictions on the use or development of land. These agreements protect forests on privately owned lands from development and may also provide owners with certain tax deductions, benefits, or incentives.

To learn more, check out these resources from the National Conservation Easement Database and the Land Trust Alliance.
Landowners can also receive region-specific guidance from local organizations like Colorado Open Lands.
Trusts that focus on old-growth forests include the 500-Year Forest Foundation and the Forest Legacy program of the U.S. Forest Service.

Companies

Consumer Goods Companies

Create deforestation-free supply chains. Many companies have pledged to accomplish “net zero deforestation” in their supply chains, though in most cases, the pledges have not yet been fulfilled. This is particularly true in the Amazon basin. Stronger and more innovative corporate commitments and disclosures are needed in order to halt deforestation, especially in intact forests.

Companies can partner with credible reporting entities while independently investigating their lumber sources to address concerns around unreliable enforcement, trafficked lumber, and the protection of Indigenous groups residing near forests. The Accountability Framework Initiative’s forest protection principles provide an overarching framework.
Partner with organizations such as Canopy, Consumer Goods Forum, Earthworm, and Starling, which work with global companies to ensure that their paper products are not sourced from carbon-rich or high conservation value (HCV) forests.
Organizations such as Supply Change and Forest500 assess companies in forest-risk commodity supply chains.

Logging Companies

Stop further incursion into old-growth forests. The destruction of old-growth forests causes extensive biodiversity loss and damage to forest functions that cannot be repaired. By halting operations in old-growth forests, logging companies can end the most damaging impacts of logging on ecosystems.

In Alaska, the Indigenous-owned corporation Sealaska announced in 2021 that it would cease old-growth logging, which formerly constituted 80–85 percent of its total operations.

Governance

Enact legislation or implement administrative action to protect old-growth forests. If intact forests fall under your jurisdiction, find a legislative or administrative way to protect them from further degradation.

President Biden issued Executive Order 14072, which mandates the protection of old-growth forests on federal land.
A study determined that there are 5 million hectares of old-growth forests left in Europe, which contributed to the European Union’s decision to establish an EU-wide network of protected areas by 2030.
Extending existing temporary forest protection policies can help ensure that old-growth forests can reach their full carbon-sequestration potential. Indonesia’s extension of its peat drainage and agricultural expansion moratorium, which decreased primary forest loss in protected areas by 88 percent in its first year, could increase carbon sequestration to over a million metric tons per year.

Respect Indigenous rights and implement Indigenous forestry practices. Indigenous peoples and local communities are widely acknowledged to be the most effective groups at conserving and stewarding forests they live in and depend on. Less than half of these lands and territories have formal recognition by governments. Key components of centering Indigenous practices include protecting Indigenous land rights, centering Indigenous voices, and contributing direct financial support:

Granting Indigenous groups formal legal titles to forest land has been shown to significantly reduce clear-cutting and disturbance by granting official protection against unregulated resource extraction. In the Peruvian Amazon, Indigenous titling has reduced forest clearing by 75 percent.
Proforestation initiatives must respect Indigenous and traditional knowledge of forest stewardship, incorporate Indigenous needs, and encourage active participation by Indigenous leaders in the policymaking process. In Australia, researchers and advocates are engaged in efforts to center Indigenous participation, while in the U.S., organizations such as the Nature Conservancy amplify Indigenous leadership in their conservation and restoration projects.
By providing direct financial support for Indigenous forest stewardship, governments can build trust with Indigenous communities and increase the effectiveness of climate pledges.
Organizations such as the Community Land Rights and Conservation Finance Initiative channel funds and grants directly to Indigenous communities in the Congo Basin and the Andes to assist with forest conservation and community land tenure.
In Indonesia, the Indigenous Peoples Alliance of the Archipelago serves as an advocate for unrestricted funding for communities like the Sungai Utik, who have preserved forests for several decades.

Invest in forest conservation. In addition to the carbon sequestration and ecosystem benefits of old-growth forests, research shows that the economic value created by leaving these forests intact is higher than that of harvested timber.

Gabon only lost approximately 0.1 percent of its rainforest annually between 2010 and 2020 by investing in satellite imagery to track deforestation, personnel to investigate potential illegal mining sites, and a QR-code tracking system to trace logs from forest to port.
Funding can be awarded to local governments that meet certain forest conservation criteria. In 2015, India implemented an “ecological fiscal transfer scheme” that rewards higher tax revenue to states that maintain their forest cover.
By compensating landowners for the biodiversity preservation and other ecosystem services old-growth forests provide, governments can increase public investment in forest protection. Costa Rica’s Payments for Environmental Services Program is an example.

End subsidies to the biomass industry. The biomass industry now accounts for over half of all “renewable energy” in the EU and continues to receive billions in subsidies from European nations. Over sixty thousand acres of forest are burned annually to produce wood pellets. Governments should cease financing these extractive industries and pivot investment to true renewables.

The Dutch government halted new biomass subsidies in 2021 and adopted a formal policy in May 2022 to permanently end subsidies for biomass heat plants.
In August 2022, the state of Massachusetts passed a bill that prevents wood-burning biomass plants from qualifying for renewable energy incentives from the Renewable Portfolio Standard Program.

Recognize wood-burning in greenhouse gas emissions accounting. The Kyoto Protocol’s exclusion of biomass energy production from carbon emissions totals created a “carbon accounting loophole.” It allows governments and industries to disguise burning wood that is harvested from old-growth forests as part of renewable energy targets. Revising these standards can accelerate the urgently needed transition to true renewables and prevent old-growth deforestation.

A 2021 open letter to the leaders of biomass-burning nations authored by over five hundred scientists worldwide and a number of transatlantic studies provide evidence of how the biomass supply chain is accelerating global warming.
Proposed policy modifications to the existing emissions framework outline how parties to the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement can reduce the potential for missing emissions by including the land-use sector in their national accounting.

Support international coordination on forest protection initiatives. Given that the world’s largest forests each span several countries, international cooperation is key to keeping intact the sizable tracts of old-growth forests.

Current international climate change treaties, including the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement, incorrectly classify newly planted trees and old-growth forests identically within emissions accounting and forest management guidelines. Incorporating language that distinguishes between the carbon sequestration potential of different aged forests is key to recognizing old-growth forests’ unique ecosystem contributions.
Brazil has proposed an alliance with the governments of Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo—countries with the most tropical rainforest—to help other highly forested nations preserve their forests, advocate for wealthy nations to contribute further financing, and obtain international aid to prevent illegal logging.
In 2022, the European Parliament and European Council agreed to ban the import of goods that contribute to the loss of forests, with strict regulations that target palm oil, coffee, lumber, cattle, cocoa, rubber, and soy. Companies will now be required to conduct stringent supply chain inspections to track product origins, avoid those sourced from land deforested after 2020, and ensure that imports do not violate local community or Indigenous rights.

Bad Actors

Enviva is the world’s largest pellet supplier. Their claims that only 2 percent of forests in the southeastern U.S. are harvested annually and that they only produce pellets from low-grade wood products not suitable for lumber have been contradicted by independent investigations. John Keppler is the president and CEO. His LinkedIn profile is here.

Key Players

Campaigns and Organizations

Biofuelwatch (UK) provides information and undertakes advocacy and campaigning in relation to the climate, biodiversity, land and human rights and public health impacts of large-scale industrial bioenergy.

Chepkitale Indigenous People Development Project (Kenya) enhances the protection and promotion of human rights through programs that bring development to the Ogiek people of Mt. Elgon.

Community Land Rights and Conservation Finance Initiative (Global) aims to contribute to raising US$10 billion by 2030 to scale up the formal recognition of Indigenous Peoples’, Afro-descendant Peoples,’ and local communities' land rights, conservation, and sustainable management of their territories.

Dogwood Alliance (U.S.) promotes forest protection as the best solution to climate change and partners with communities to develop economic solutions that work with and for our forests.

The Forest Defenders Alliance (European Union) is an initiative to amplify the voices of NGOs in Europe and in countries with forests that are threatened by EU policies.

Forest Peoples Programme (Global) specializes in land rights, environment, development, and indigenous affairs with high-level qualifications in social anthropology, human rights law, tropical forest ecology and environmental science.

Indigenous Environmental Network (U.S.) was formed by grassroots Indigenous peoples and individuals to address environmental and economic justice issues.

Indigenous Peoples Alliance of the Archipelago (Indonesia) works in strategic partnerships with civil society networks and NGOs that support and strengthen indigenous peoples.

Native Forest Restoration Trust (New Zealand) is dedicated to protecting New Zealand’s native forests and wetlands.

Native Land Conservancy (U.S.) is an Indigenous-led land conservation nonprofit.

The Nature Conservancy (U.S.) is a global environmental nonprofit working to create a world where people and nature can thrive.

Podáali Fund (Brazil) is the first Amazonian mechanism to capture and redistribute resources to Indigenous peoples, organizations, and communities.

Old-Growth Forest Network (U.S.) is the only national network in the U.S. of protected, old-growth, native forests where people of all generations can experience biodiversity and the beauty of nature.

Biohabitats (U.S.) applies the science of ecology to restoring ecosystems, conserving habitats, and regenerating the natural systems that sustain all life on Earth.

Individuals

William Moomaw is a professor and founding director of the Center for International Environment and Resource Policy at Tufts University and is credited with coining the term “proforestation.”

Alessandra Korop Munduruku is an Indigenous environmental activist and Munduruku leader working to half deforestation in Brazil.