Arbor Day Carbon, Pollination Unite to Strengthen Global Reforestation Efforts

LINCOLN, Nebraska (August 7, 2024) – Arbor Day Carbon has joined forces with climate and nature investment and advisory firm Pollination in a partnership that aims to accelerate nature-based-solution carbon removal in critical ecosystems.

The strategic partnership will seek to find, vet, fund and develop high-quality and high-integrity afforestation/reforestation carbon projects across the globe.   

Arbor Day Carbon is a wholly owned subsidiary of the global tree planting nonprofit Arbor Day Foundation and has helped corporations to offset over 7 million metric tons of carbon emissions. Since its inception in 1972, the Arbor Day Foundation has helped plant more than 500 million trees globally and empowered hundreds of corporations to achieve their climate goals.

“Amid the increasingly urgent fight against climate change, the Arbor Day Foundation is in constant pursuit of new ways to drive impact through reforestation,” said Dan Lambe, chief executive of the Arbor Day Foundation. “Pollination has demonstrated expertise in steering capital to unlock positive, transformational change in nature. We’re confident their partnership — combined with the Foundation’s decades of tree planting experience and worldwide networks of planting partners and project developers — will help fuel the voluntary carbon market with much needed, high-quality carbon removal supply.”

Founded in 2019, Pollination has quickly expanded to become a leading climate and nature firm across Europe, the Americas and Asia Pacific. Alongside its market leading advisory and investment management services it has built a global project development arm that is assembling a high-impact portfolio of nature-based carbon projects to create positive outcomes for investors as well as for climate and nature.

Under the partnership, the Arbor Day Foundation will identify suitable Afforestation, Reforestation & Revegetation (ARR) carbon projects across their network. Pollination will onboard selected projects for funding, and will provide technical, regulatory and commerical project development support. The Foundation will also support the marketing of issued carbon credits for these projects.

The partnership draws on Pollination’s demonstrated ability to leverage global carbon markets to deliver climate and nature objectives as well as assembling and deploying finance for critically needed nature restoration.

“We know that if the world is going to achieve its net zero goals, then carbon markets will need to be a big part of getting there,” Pollination Head of Carbon and Nature Projects Phil Cohn said. “We also know that demand is growing fast for high quality carbon credits that are transparently sourced from projects of impeccable rigor and integrity.

“Arbor Day Foundation’s global network of implementation partners, combined with Pollination’s experience in project finance and development will be a game-changing partnership that can deliver high integrity projects and credits at scale. We are truly excited to begin identifying where we can deploy this new partnership model. “

Globally, it is estimated that $US200 billion a year in finance is needed to reach nature repair and protection goals by 2030. A 2023 report from the Arbor Day Foundation concluded that investment in the voluntary carbon market is key in addressing the climate crisis and unlocking capital for forest restoration. The report explores learnings and observations of the market from the Foundation’s team of experts and can be read here.