3 min read

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Forest Sustainability in the US

The phrase “no good deed goes unpunished” is often used in jest—a sort of feigned indignation. For instance, you slow down to let a car turn into traffic ahead of you and then watch that car make it through the intersection while you sit at the red light shaking your head and muttering, “No good deed goes unpunished.”

When good deeds really are punished, however, it’s not at all funny.

Farmers certainly weren’t laughing in 2006, when the now-defunct Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) implemented a carbon credit scheme for sequestration of carbon dioxide in soils. Since CO2 is sequestered in the organic material found in the soil, it is a natural carbon sink. Tilling soil, however, releases that CO2 into the atmosphere. To encourage sequestration, the CCX created carbon credits for farmers who adopted no-till agronomic practices. So far, this sounds pretty good for farmers. Soil science supports the premise that CO2 is sequestered, and the creation of a soil sequestration credits made sense. At least until the rules were written.

Before we get to the rules, however, let’s look at the history of no-till farming. Starting in the 1940s, dirt doctors (also known as soil scientists) began encouraging farmers to adopt no-till agronomic practices because the benefits were overwhelming. No-till farming:

  • Reduces soil compaction, erosion, and runoff
  • Increases organic matter without adversely affecting earthworms and beneficial microorganisms
  • Protects against wind erosion (think dust bowl)
  • Reduces the need for irrigation
  • Avoids the cost of labor and fuel associated with tilling
  • Increases yields

By the late 1980’s, no-till agriculture was widely adopted in US agriculture. Convinced by the science, no-till farmers did the right thing: they adopted best practices that preserved working farmland.

In 2006, however, these farmers found themselves stuck at a metaphorical red light, reconsidering their good deed. When the rules were written, the CCX restricted access to the soil sequestration program to only those farms that had recently converted to no-till agronomic practices. To all the farmers that did the right thing in the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s, that had actually been sequestering carbon for decades, the CCX proved once again that “No good deed goes unpunished.”

Today, the risk of being punished for doing the right thing too early could befall private timberland owners (the suppliers of biomass in the US) and the growing US industrial pellet industry (those converting biomass into exportable pellets).

To meet its goal of producing 20 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020, the UK is in the process of setting sustainability standards for biomass sources. As a result, the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) is now working to 1) solidify the definition of biomass and 2) determine the sustainability requirements that biomass sources must meet before they qualify for renewable energy credits. (You can read the background of the process in the UK in Suz-Anne Kinney’s post, UK Considers Biomass Sustainability Criteria.)

It remains to be seen what DECC’s final determination will be, but it is clear DECC must write one set of rules for all biomass sources, whether they come from developed or developing countries.

In the United States, just as farmers adopted no-till farming because it was the right thing to do to sustain farmland, timberland owners, forest products companies and governments adopted a series of practices—we might call them “good deeds”—that help ensure US forests are and will remain sustainable:

  1. The United States has strong national laws that protect soil, ground water, forests, and endangered and threatened species. The Clean Water Act (CWA), the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and The Lacey Act (which makes it illegal to harvest trees from protected areas) are all diligently enforced.
  2. Individual states have long-standing Best Management Practices (BMP) that ensure compliance to CWA, ESA and The Lacey Act.
  3. The United States has a robust history of acquiring and protecting unique and sensitive habitats on behalf of all citizens of the United States. Management of public land in National Forests, National Recreational Areas, National Wilderness Areas and National Parks is rigorous. Perhaps the most convincing proof that US forests and forest habitats are protected is this: to protect a single species, the spotted owl, the US set aside 9.6 million acres of forestland in the western states as critical habitat.
  4. The United States has strong and long-established personal property rights law and a robust judicial system that protects owners and allows for fair and impartial resolution of land disputes.

On one hand, these good deeds go a long way to ensure the continued sustainability of our nation’s forests. The US Forest Service’s National Report on Sustainable Forests – 2010 says that US forest land has remained stable at 750 million acres over the last century. And, since 1953, these same forests have seen an increase of 51 percent in the volume of timber growing there.

Where US forests are vulnerable, says the report, they are at risk from factors other than commercial timber harvests. These risks include :

  • Urbanization and its concomitant loss of forest land to recreational purposes.
  • Altered patterns of forest disturbance resulting from a pest pressure and changes in temperature and precipitation patterns – resulting in increased mortality, changing species distribution and wildfires.
  • Loss of forests that are actively managed: “With the loss of an active management focus and the revenue streams that often accompany it, the survival of these forests and their associated ecosystem services is in question.”

On the other hand, the US could be punished despite these good deeds. Currently, no systematic tract-by-tract system to VERIFY that these laws are upheld on every tract exists. The lack of a system that can verify sustainability to UK standards may prevent most of the forests of the United States from supplying sustainable biomass to the UK. The possible punishment for our good deeds if new markets are closed to timberland owners in the US: we may lose forests for lack of an economic incentive to manage them.