“For us, it’s about putting all of the benefits of forests on the same economic footing as timber” and “to make more valuable alive than dead.” “Turns out most landowners aren’t excited about cutting trees down, it’s just that they have costs they have to cover,” he says. Then it calculates the benefits of deferring that harvest by preserving and reforesting trees, giving landowners a yearly income while they wait for trees to mature. On the podcast, Parisa tells us how Basemap evaluates the economic likelihood of a forest’s timber harvest, based on factors like proximity to mills and timber prices. Zack Parisa (left) discussing the management and history of Ross Forests with consulting forester Jon Lindsay and landowner John Ross in Savannah, Tennessee. That means zero cost to landowners for land assessment NCX only asks that landowners commit to defer harvesting their trees for one year at a time (it doesn’t require any acre minimums).

“We’re using satellite imagery and some ground measurements to assess the number, size, and species of every tree in the United States,” says Parisa, who grew up in southeastern Alabama surrounded by independent family landowners. The crux of NCX’s carbon exchange is Basemap, its AI model that assesses millions of acres of forests. In other words, earning money simply by preserving and maintaining the existing trees on their land. They tell us how they’re looping in those forgotten small landowners, using proprietary tech to assess their lands’ carbon-storage potential, and helping them maximize their income by encouraging them to delay harvesting so they can benefit from carbon credits. Jennifer Jenkins That’s according to NCX, or National Capital Exchange, a carbon marketplace whose cofounder, Zack Parisa, and chief sustainability officer, Jen Jenkins, join us on today’s episode of the World Changing Ideas podcast. That has sidelined small landowners and erased sequestration opportunities on 200 million forest acres in the U.S. But the opportunity to sell carbon credits to businesses has often been reserved for the largest landowners those who can afford to make decades-long commitments to maintain their trees and withstand costs of up to $200,000 to assess their land’s carbon storage potential. They offset the carbon emissions caused by their operations by paying for reforestation (the planting of new trees) or by paying to preserve forests (i.e.

Many companies benefit from nature’s oldest tech. It’s estimated that America’s forests sequester about 866 million tons of carbon annually. They pull carbon dioxide from the air for photosynthesis and then store it, sometimes for decades a white oak captures and stores carbon throughout its 200-year life. Before there was carbon-capture technology, there were trees.

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