Exploding Carbon-Credit Market Helps Brazil Regrow Rainforest

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With global corporations willing to pay top dollar to offset their pollution, companies like Rio de Janeiro-based re.green are selling carbon credits to finance the complex and expensive restoration of 6,000 square miles of Brazilian rainforest, an area nearly the size of Hawaii’s major islands combined.

While most reforestation around the world has focused on plantations of single tree species, often to produce timber and pulp, companies are now using carbon credits for the slower and more sustainable regrowing of native landscapes in tropical countries where massive destruction of rainforests is blamed by scientists as a major cause of global warming.

Scientists say restoring the Earth’s rainforests is essential to keep the planet from overheating. Rainforests suck in and store massive amounts of the carbon dioxide produced when vehicles and factories burn fossil fuel, absorbing 7.6 billion metric tons of CO2 a year, according to a 2021 study published by Nature. That is about 20% of the annual global CO2 emissions scientists blame for rising temperatures. Brazil could theoretically capture up to 746 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent a year by regrowing cleared forests. No other country comes close.

Carbon trading is making large-scale projects that cultivate native vegetation economically viable, say reforestation companies. Sales of credits for forest restoration average $20 each, up from $7 a year ago, according to OPIS, an energy and carbon data company owned by Dow Jones, parent of The Wall Street Journal.

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