Many requirements of forest management standards of voluntary forest certification systems (VFC) regarding forest management completely comply with internationally recognized criteria for improved forest management (IFM) used in climate forest projects. This includes conservation of valuable forests (especially intact and old-growth), establishment of productive artificial stands, retention of key habitats (large trees, rare tree species, coarse woody debris), retention of other habitats of rare and threatened species, measures of preservation of mosaic landscape as well as minimization of the impact on vegetation cover, hydrological regime of the area and soils. Therefore, VFC can be viewed as an instrument, which additionally quantitatively contributes to climate change mitigation and forest adaptation relatively the baseline level of forest management. A certificate holder of VFC based on monitoring results and using standard methods to calculate carbon stock in forests is able to receive some quantitative estimates of increased carbon accumulation in certified forests. Such quantitative estimates can be used by retailers and large buyers of certified products to demonstrate their contribution to climate change mitigation and forest adaptation.
Karpachevskiy et al. (Mon,) studied this question.