Forgotten Forests and Corporate Climate Commitments: Scaling Sustainability with Nature-Based Solutions

This paper assesses the role of nature-based solutions as a way to scale sustainability goals, focusing on the use of carbon credits in voluntary corporate climate commitments. To accomplish this, we adapt the DICE23 model by incorporating a demand function for voluntary corporate carbon abatement and by including the costs of supplying nature-based and non-CO2 credits to that market. Through scenario analysis, we examine how likely current and proposed new commitments are to meet 1.5 °C and 2 °C climate thresholds by 2030 and 2050 with and without the use of nature-based carbon credits. We find that the inclusion of nature-based credits would increase the probability of meeting a 2 °C threshold by 2030 by lowering costs and significantly increasing overall mitigation. A key result of this paper is that allowing companies to utilize nature-based credits to deliver on near-term mitigation targets can provide the same number of emission reductions as efforts to expand corporate commitments three-fold, but is limited to reductions in the energy sector alone. Overall, incorporating forests and other nature-based credits into corporate commitments could provide immediate and substantial climate benefits while also supporting people and nature impacts today, enabling companies to better achieve multiple social and sustainability goals simultaneously.