WHEREAS municipalities have to adopt a green house gas emissions strategy as part of their Official Community Plan requirement by May 2010; AND WHEREAS there are communities that have woodlots and community forest licenses pending: THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the UBCM lobby the provincial government to enable woodlot and community forest licence holders under crown tenure licence, as well as local government green projects such as greenways and urban forests, to retain the carbon sequestering and carbon credits accrued.
Ministry of Forests Range The Pacific Carbon Trust is considering the purchase of carbon offsets from forest management activities to help government become carbon neutral in 2010. Municipalities are required to have a greenhouse gas emissions strategy as part of their Official Community Plan by May 2010. The Ministry of Forests Range together with the Ministry of Environment and Pacific Carbon Trust are developing protocols for use with the Emissions Offset Regulation to quantify the increase in carbon storage or reduction in emissions associated with forest projects. The Emissions Offset Regulation EOR requires the offsets from projects to be additional, measurable, verifiable and real. Protocols will be designed to meet this and other requirements of the EOR. To take advantage of offset credits from forest projects it is expected that municipalities will need to develop and monitor projects that meet the requirements under the regulation and use an approved protocol. Ownership of the carbon and offsets for crown land areas needs to be resolved to include projects within community forests and woodlots. The Ministry of Forests is working on solutions around ownership which will encourage investments on crown land that will increase carbon storage and allow ownership andor sharing of the resulting offset. Urban forest projects will likely also need to meet the rigours of the emissions offset regulation and an appropriate protocol in order to be considered valid for the purpose of offsetting emissions.