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REDD: Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation.  The “REDD” mechanism is designed to make forests more valuable when left standing than if they were cut down. This is done by creating a financial value for the carbon stored in the trees and carbon emissions avoided by preventing deforestation. This also allows carbon to be quantified and standardized. The carbon is sold in the form of Carbon Credits, which represents the right to emit one tonne of carbon dioxide. (a tonne is a metric measurement equal to 2204.6 pounds) Companies use these credits to offset their carbon emissions.

The REDD framework is a UN initiative and the use of the funds generated from the sale of the credits is strictly defined to ensure that it is used to preserve ecosystems and uplift local communities. All carbon credits purchased by bench are independently certified by UN approved certification bodies. All bench carbon credit purchases are recorded on a blockchain to provide an immutable transparent record of the chain-of-custody.

Next to ocean reefs, tropical rainforests are the richest ecosystems on Earth. Worldwide, forests are also home — or provide resources — to some 70 million people, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN. Managing forests sustainably so they serve the people dependent on them, continue to house an extraordinary range of wild plants and animals, and meet the global need to sequester carbon is now an existential requirement.

Forests harbor most of Earth’s terrestrial biodiversity and its three components – ecosystem, species, and genetic diversity. Trees are the foundations of forest ecosystems, and many of the world’s 60,000 tree species are also important components of woodlands and agricultural landscapes. Forests provide habitats for about 80 percent of amphibian species, 75 percent of bird species, and 68 percent of mammal species. About 60 percent of all vascular plants occur in tropical forests. The genetic diversity of trees is being threatened and eroded by the loss of tree populations, unsustainable harvesting, overgrazing, climate change, fire, and invasive species. Projected declines in the diversity and abundance of many major pollinators threaten food security, human health, and the cultural fabric and livelihoods of millions of people, especially rural and indigenous communities.

Changes in forest cover and characteristics also influence climate in other ways. For example, they affect albedo (the extent to which solar radiation and, therefore heat is reflected back to the atmosphere), the emission of water vapor into the atmosphere (through evapotranspiration), the height above the Earth’s surface to which heat and water vapor are forced upward (by the “roughness” of tree canopies), and the extent to which dust and smoke particles, pollen and microbes enter the atmosphere as aerosols (with their own effects on temperature). Trees also emit other chemicals that affect climate, such as biogenic volatile organic compounds.

The negative local and regional effects of forest and tree loss on temperature and rainfall can be substantial, especially in the tropics. Declines in rainfall linked to deforestation in the southern Brazilian Amazon could cause agricultural losses (e.g., declines in soybean and livestock yields) valued at more than USD 1 billion per year between now and 2050; recent modeling also indicates that deforestation of remaining humid rainforests in Africa would likely dramatically affect rainfed agriculture across the continent, particularly maize-based cropping systems north of the equator. The local to regional impacts of forests on climate can be important for reducing urban heat (primarily through transpiration, shading, and albedo); for example, trees in urban settings have been shown to reduce land surface temperatures in Central Europe in summer and during heat extremes by as much as 12 °C.