Russia: a tree for carbon.

The Taiga could become the support for a new financial market. Indeed, Moscow plans to monetize the carbon absorbed in the Far East by its forests. The Taiga stretches across Eurasia, over 6,000 km from east to west, from eastern Siberia to Scandinavia, passing through northern Russia. This gigantic carbon sink, which represents 20% of the world's forests, is capable of absorbing 2 / 5th of the greenhouse gas emissions released by Russia.

Wladimir Poutine's idea is to set up an online market for companies wishing to offset their carbon footprint. For this, the Russian government will use drones and satellites in order to collect as much data as possible which will then be integrated into a digital platform in order to determine the capacity of the 640 billion trees to absorb CO².

The principle of this monetization is simple. A company rents a parcel of forest to the State, undertakes to protect it and to make new plantations there. In return, the same company is granted a carbon credit by the State if the results are verifiable and tangible. A significant windfall for companies that are billed 40 euros per tonne of carbon at the current market price.

However, if the Russian government wants to complete this project, it will have to make very heavy investments. The Taiga is poorly maintained and in poor condition. A situation which could worsen due to the violent fires which rage the summer in this region. Without sustainable and active forest management, the Russian government will have a hard time selling this project to Russian companies.

The stakes are high for the Kremlin, which hopes to be able to announce, on November 1, a decision to put this initiative into practice thanks to the good results of the analyzes in progress. Beyond the borders of Russia, it is about a political and strategic step on behalf of the head of the Kremlin who sees, also, in the promotion of this bio economy a way of taking care of its image abroad in a context of carbon neutrality set at 2050 by the international community.