Will Carbon Farming get us to Net Zero? Dr Sean Weaver, Ekos

This Climate Business

Dr Sean Weaver, CEO and founder of Ekos, is a pioneer in using carbon credits to fund indigenous forests, at scale. Which is handy, because we need them. The Climate Change Commission says we need fewer cows and many thousands of hectares of trees, exotic and native. Carbon farming appears to provide an effective mechanism to get there. Landowners plant trees on what was once pasture and sell carbon credits through the emission trading scheme or to involuntary markets. Lovely. But should we be careful what we wish for? Are we creating a perverse incentive to simply carpet New Zealand in fast growing, cheap pine forests that later become homes to pests, pose fire risks and smother native regeneration? Could carbon farming as we know it now, create a new set of problems down the line?

Check out Sean Weaver and Ekos here