Communities such as cities and counties are increasingly interested in understanding how nature-based solutions can help them reach their climate change mitigation and adaptation goals. However, many communities do not know what role their forests and trees play in influencing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions because they don’t include them in their inventories. 

World Resources Institute, C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group (C40) and ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability (ICLEI) have partnered to create the Supplemental Guidance for Forests and Trees. It provides a widely applicable framework for including GHG emissions and removals (sequestration) by forests and trees in communities’ GHG inventories.  

This supplemental guidance to the Global Protocol for Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas Inventories (GPC) provides detailed methods that communities can follow to estimate both GHG emissions from land-use change and other forest disturbances and carbon dioxide removals by forests and trees growing within their borders. Learn more here.