Open Forest Protocol (OFP), a pioneering open-source protocol designed to facilitate the monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) of reforestation projects. OFP is empowering projects globally to create transparent and verifiable proof of impact, unlocking the vast potential of reforestation in mitigating climate change and its far-reaching impact on carbon sequestration, biodiversity, livelihoods, and essential ecosystem services. In this exclusive interview for MORFO 's white paper on The Future of Reforestation Carbon Credits, Fred Fournier offers a glimpse into a future where transparency and data-backed carbon financing redefine the landscape of nature-based climate solutions.
Can you introduce yourself?
I am co-founder and CEO of Open Forest Protocol (OFP). As a natural scientist who has worked in the environmental consultancy sector for 20 years, I am also the director and co-founder of On A Mission, a Swiss NGO that supports sustainable reforestation projects worldwide. Seeing the need to develop reforestation projects with greater transparency and trust, I co-founded OFP, an open source protocol providing state-of-the-art tools for the measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) of reforestation projects, enabling carbon financing.
Can you introduce the Open Forest Protocol (OFP)? What is the history of OFP?
Open Forest Protocol (OFP) is a scalable open platform that enables forestry projects of any size, anywhere in the world, to carry out MRV of their reforestation data.
Through OFP, individuals, communities, NGOs, entrepreneurs, and governments are able to create transparent, immutable, proof-of-impact data that is comprehensively verified by a network of independent experts.
OFP is creating the foundation for more inclusive, scalable, high-integrity and data-backed financing mechanisms (including carbon credits) for nature-based climate solutions.
OFP came into being when our co-founders (Fred Fournier, Aureline Grange and Michael Kelly), who specialize in both technology and reforestation practices, identified significant barriers to the large-scale development of nature-based projects at a level necessary to mitigate climate change. Indeed, most nature-based projects lacked access to :
- Cost-effective, transparent MRV tools
- A sustainable, recurring source of financing
These bottlenecks are tackled and solved with OFP’s technology and products. We provide accessible and transparent MRV tools to projects of any size, anywhere. Also, we enable eligible carbon projects to access the creation of high-integrity, digital carbon credits.These obstacles are addressed and resolved with OFP's technology and products. We provide accessible and transparent MRV tools to projects of all sizes, anywhere. What's more, we enable eligible carbon projects to access the creation of high-integrity digital carbon credits.
How do you participate in carbon projects linked to reforestation? What is OFP's role?
For carbon projects related to reforestation, OFP is the transparent MRV tools provider, carbon credits issuer and registry.
When a forest carbon project developer comes to OFP, they use our digital products to register their project and input various information related to it. This information is used to evaluate the project’s eligibility to access OFP’s carbon financing mechanisms.
If the project is approved, the MRV program for the project kicks in and the project begins a structured and regular ground monitoring. This ground monitoring is conducted with people on the ground using OFP’s mobile app to record the tree measurements and data.
At most every year, this information is then validated by OFP’s distributed group of 20+ validation and verification bodies. Once the information is validated, all data (monitoring data and validation data) is recorded on the blockchain and displayed in the Ecosystem Explorer. If the project’s monitoring data is validated by the validators, carbon credits corresponding to the amount of carbon stored in the forest between the two latest validated monitoring stages are issued and allocated to the project developer.
What are the numbers or market insights that excite you in the reforestation space?
There is a massive amount of land globally that is available for restoration, but is presently blocked because of the high costs associated with traditional MRV programs, lack of financing, difficulty to access carbon financing programs.
According to McKinsey, global demand for carbon credits in the VCM could increase by a factor of 25 by 2030 and 100 by 2050. However, if projects can’t get the necessary tools to unlock the value within their land, the market will struggle to scale. We are able to offer our tools to projects for practically no cost, and because of this, we are empowering projects to monitor their land activities and gain access to financing in ways that have been difficult or impossible before.
How do MRV and blockchain improve carbon credits?
Blockchains are simply digital ledgers that you cannot edit and where all information is publicly available. When thought about this way, they make excellent tools for tracking the provenance and subsequent issuance and sale of carbon credits. Blockchains are also particularly suitable for securely storing MRV data associated with carbon projects, as the information is stored in a way that cannot be changed and is freely accessible to the public.
Blockchains are already revolutionizing the supply chain industry because of these capabilities, and they will continue to bring more trust and transparency to the various carbon markets.
Why should a company invest in tokenized carbon credits?
Tokenization of assets generally enables more transparency, flexibility, and autonomy than assets managed by a third party on private databases. In the case of carbon credits, you have access to more verifiably transparent information than that typically available with non-tokenized carbon credits. These assets are also self-custodial, meaning the management of them are entirely up to you. You do not need any third parties to generate or trade these credits.
Why should a company invest in carbon credits linked to reforestation rather than other types of carbon credits?
At the end of the day, a company should invest in the projects that are closest to their values and where they can have the greatest impact. Switching to renewable energy is absolutely necessary, as is halting deforestation and restoring the ecosystems and forests we have destroyed over the past decades.
A company should support reforestation projects if it wishes to have an impact on:
- Carbon sequestration, as the world's forests stored about 296 gigatonnes of carbon in their biomass alone in 2020 (FAO).
- Biodiversity, as forests are the most biodiverse terrestrial ecosystems. Over 80% of terrestrial species – animals, plants, and insects – are found in forests (FAO).
- Livelihoods, as 1.6 billion people depend in some way on forests for their livelihoods, including 70 million indigenous people who are almost wholly dependent on forests (FAO)
- Ecosystem Services, including water purification, flood prevention, soil conservation, and pollination services for crops. The Nature Conservancy estimates the value of these services globally is approximately $33 trillion per year.
How do you see the current situation for carbon credits linked to reforestation?
At OFP, we believe that a lot can be done to improve the transparency of carbon credits and especially access to the data backing carbon credits. OFP’s vision is to create the highest-integrity and transparent nature-based carbon credits. We truly believe that a transparent and accessible MRV infrastructure is the primary and essential step in establishing a credible and trusted ecosystem and carbon markets.
By removing the MRV barrier that prevents many afforestation/reforestation projects from getting off the ground, we hope to accelerate the development of high-quality reforestation projects with the following core values:
- Additional and permanent
- Creation/restoration of biodiverse forests with multiple native species
- Involvement of local communities in project activities
- Regular and frequent ground monitoring
What are the toughest challenges you face today?
Some of our most difficult challenges relate primarily to the maturity of the voluntary carbon market. This global commodity market is still very new, and as such the infrastructure that would help finance and support forest projects is lacking. However, we are confident that as this market grows, our ability to scale forest project development will only increase.
Do you have any recommendations or advice for companies wishing to invest in carbon credits linked to reforestation?
One of the most important things to consider is which project a carbon credit came from. Not all carbon credits are created equal, and it is important to make sure that you have as much information about the origination of that credit as possible. Once you know where the carbon credit comes from, it is very important to make sure that the project’s activities are ecologically beneficial. Monocrop plantations where only one species of tree is planted are not beneficial for the surrounding environment, and rarely possess the same resilience as a biodiverse forest. Lastly, understanding the human impact of a project is something that cannot be ignored. Forests that positively engage the local communities around them typically have higher survivability rates while also providing greater benefits to the people that help protect them.
