Promoting SMART associations and innovative financing for responsible forest management and carbon sink enhancement

In Italy, 31,5% of the land is covered by forests but only 15% of these has a Management Plan in place. This is mainly due to the high land fragmentation of public and private properties, low economic returns from forest activities, and lack of capacity to market ecosystem products and services (i.e. carbon and other benefits). The lack of management, together with climate change effects, leads to a generally increased intensity of extreme events, such as forest fires, landslides, floods, and pests which are decreasing the carbon stock and the resilience of our forests. To face this situation, the LIFE ClimatePositive will promote three main practices and approaches:

• promoting SMART and digital forest associations as the main social management tool able to overcome fragmentation and enhance responsible management and carbon removals in Italian forests.

• Development and uptake of the national carbon monitoring tool, code and registry to enable robust certification of climate impacts and related markets.

• Development and uptake of three business models to remunerate landowners for the provision of carbon and biodiversity benefits, through the private market, and the connection with the new Italian CAP Strategic Plan.

Innovative forest interventions will be carried out in 5 different pilot forest associations, aiming to present a variety of activities that can enhance mitigation of climate change through carbon sequestration and reducing the vulnerability of forests ecosystems. Other ten forest associations will be replication the project results by achieving climate and biodiversity impacts within 49.5 km2.

Through key replication and exploitation activities, together with the scale-up of robust business models, the project aims to have a positive climate and biodiversity impact on at least 250 km2 of forest lands by 5 years after the project ends, in line with the EU Forest Strategy 2030. The main objectives of the LIFE ClimatePositive project are to promote forest landowners associations, to overcome fragmentation of land property, and to support responsible management as well as carbon sequestration in Italian forests. To this end, the project team will: Develop and launch a national carbon monitoring tool and registry to enable a reliable certification of ecosystem services provided by forests, and to support the related markets. Develop and launch three business models to remunerate landowners for the provision of carbon and biodiversity benefits through private markets and the new Italian CAP Strategic Plan.Expected results:Test of innovative forest interventions in the territories of 5 forest associations to increase carbon sequestration and reduce the vulnerability of forests ecosystems. Replication of the forest interventions in the territories of 10 more forest associations.Involvement of 100 new members (landowners) in forest associations.Development of national protocols for the monitoring of greenhouse gases (GHGs) sequestration and quantification of carbon stocks in the forests.21 new certifications of ecosystem services according to the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) standards.Preparation of 15 forest management plans covering an area of 16.5 km2 overall.Development of a toolkit for managing “Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-bound” (SMART) associations.Elaboration of a "Forest Carbon Code" to serve as a guideline to regulate voluntary initiatives in the forest sector for the generation and sale of carbon credits.&nbsp