Meet the Aussies aiming to turn forests into a magic money tree

afr.com:

London | The emerging global carbon market will radically reshape the world’s forests into a potentially booming asset class – one already worth $US100 billion ($156 billion) – but the industry has no seat at the table where the new rules are getting drawn up.

Two Australian veterans of the forestry industry are hoping to change that, launching an International Sustainable Forestry Coalition with 10 founding companies that together manage 9 million hectares of forest across 27 countries.

They are looking to shoulder into the United Nations corridors and COP-related processes and initiatives that they say will make or break their sector as an investible asset class.

Forests are already a $US100 billion asset class. Michele Mossop

“We are facing a world at the moment which has been designed by accountants and extractive industries and others, who don’t understand many of the permutations, the complications, the interconnectedness of the way that forestry operates,” said Ross Hampton, a long-time lobbyist for the sector in Australia who will now head the ISFC from London.

Mr Hampton said the coalition would tackle the mechanisms of climate finance and markets, trying to help develop solutions that were coherent and implementable.

“At the moment it’s a dog’s breakfast. Many of these processes are going to be impossible for the really big capital players to work with, unless we can get some fungibility and consistency across the world.”

Forests will potentially take on almost one-third of the decarbonisation task in coming decades: wood will be substituted for plastic in the “circular economy”; it will become a feedstock for biomass; and forests will serve as carbon offsets and credits.

David Brand, founder of fund manager