MSU research project works to slow climate change, help poor

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MSU researchers are working on reducing poverty and mitigating climate change at the same time.

Their project, called Carbon2Markets, works to slow climate change through sequestering carbon via agroforestry and helps provide income to farmers.

Agroforestry is the process of making trees part of an agricultural forestry system, which often involves mixing annuals such as corn or pineapple, with perennials such as trees, MSU forestry professor David Skole said.

The project started about two and a half years ago, Skole said.

“(It focuses on) how can we use this science to better the lives of (the world’s poor) and get them planting trees and get them in the carbon market, so it can provide income for them,” Skole said.

Carbon sequestration is the process of taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and storing it in places such as the soil and in trees. It is linked to poverty alleviation because the participating farmers can sell the products they grow, as well as the carbon credits, he said.

Carbon offsets are traded at a price, so if the farmers can sequester it, then it can be measured and sold, Skole said.

Brent Simpson, adjunct associate professor in MSU’s Institute of International Agriculture, said the program provides benefits for people and for the climate.

“The cumulative potential of these lands to sequester CO2 from the atmosphere is tremendous,” Simpson said in an e-mail. “If, at the same time, farmers can receive payments through the internal carbon financial markets for the carbon that they remove from the atmosphere, as well as earn additional income through more productive carbon rich agricultural soils, agroforesty and forest systems, then we have helped to establish a virtuous win-win cycle.”

The Chicago Climate Exchange, or CCX, is one of the place where the offsets are traded. Carbon2Markets isn’t a direct member of CCX, rather it’s affiliated through MSU, according to the information from CCX.

Carbon2Markets has projects in Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Guatemala.

Jamie DePolo, communications manager for the MSU Office of Biobased Technologies, accompanied Skole and MSU social forestry specialist Jay Samek to Thailand and Laos. The trip started July 6 and ended July 20.

She went to gather information about the program and said she spoke with government officials and farmers involved in the project.

“The group that I saw, (Carbon2Markets) had been working with the longest — in Thailand, the Inpang Community Network,” she said. “I spoke with the director of the community center there and he told me, the people, the farmers, in his group are aware of global warming. He noticed a reduced yield in his crops and was happy to participate.”

Simpson said the project is important because there is only one Earth.

“Our lifeboat is planet Earth, and there is no getting off,” Simpson said. “We will sink or swim together. There has never been a time like this in our history.”

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