ABSTRACT
Over the past decade there has been significant progress in developing markets for carbon offsets, as part of efforts to implement the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), signed in Rio in 1992 during the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED). The market is still in its very early stages, but recent initiatives around the world suggest that forestry offsets could play an increasingly important role in achieving the emission-reduction targets agreed by signatories to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. Discussion of the potential role of forests in carbon services has tended to focus on large-scale forest industry projects, with relatively little attention being paid to the potential role of small farmers. This neglects their potential contribution to addressing global climate change problems, while cutting them out of a potentially valuable source of additional income. Involving small farmers in the emerging international market for carbon services is not an easy task, however. This Chapter examines an effort to do so: the Scolel Té project in southern Mexico.
