The Science Behind Sequestration
Carbon is an essential building block of life. It is found within our DNA and RNA, our proteins and lipids and amino acids, and our joints and bones and much more. This holds true for all life on Earth, and no more so than for trees and other woody plants, whose towering trunks and far-reaching branches are approximately 50 % carbon by weight.
This is why trees— and the healthy forested habitats that support them— are essential to the fight against global climate change. A single medium deciduous tree allowed to grow for a decade will sequester approximately 38 pounds( 17 kilograms) of carbon each year. The towering trees that often dominate tropical rainforests sequester even more, with estimates of 50 or more pounds( 22.6 or more kilograms) of carbon stored every year per individual tree. When this is extrapolated to include the many millions of tree-filled acres that make up the world’ s great tropical rainforests, the carbon-sequestration math rapidly becomes quite impressive.
When we consider a project for our Rainforest Climate Action Fund, we look for one of three high-impact types of forest. We call these:( 1) carbon vaults, forests that safeguard significant amounts of carbon in perpetuity by protecting the large, tall, and healthy trees that are already growing there and storing carbon;( 2) frontier forests, which reduce carbon emissions by protecting forests at risk of deforestation; and( 3) super-sequesterers, which are ecosystems such as mangroves and swamp forests that are regularly or permanently inundated with water, increasing their ability to sequester carbon in the soil by blocking the oxygen required for decomposition.
700-year-old Brazil Nut tree in Brazil | James Lewis
Our Approach Works
Since we protected our first acres in 1988, our history has been one of successful and sustainable land protection. Ninety-seven percent of our projects achieve permanent legal land protection, and 99 % of the forests protected by these projects remain standing today. This means those forests continue to safeguard the carbon they already store, and often are able to sequester more every year.
Global data affirms our approach: keeping existing forests standing remains the best solution for maintaining the vast amount of carbon stored within them. Since 2021, and with the generous support of our donors, the Rainforest Climate Action Fund has already supported 41 projects around the world. Combined, those projects will safeguard more than 5.8 gigatons of CO 2 equivalents— equal to the emissions from the average annual electricity use of more than 1.2 billion homes— through the protection of tropical and subtropical forests and other habitats in the Americas, Africa, and Asia and Oceania.
We will not stop there. As long as tropical forests require protection, we will work with our Indigenous, local, and international partners to protect acres, safeguarding species, people, and vast stores of carbon around the planet.
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