3. Creating Multiple Business Models To Finance Ongoing Costs & Protect More

The main thinking model was that in order to make buying and maintaining forests sustainable, we could create multiple revenue streams.

Potential benefits:

1. Fund the ongoing management costs
2. Make back the initial cost of acquisition & set-up
3. Allocate part of revenue to acquiring more forests

In theory, it made sense that generating income from the forest can ensure that they are preserved and protected in perpetuity.

Options of revenue models:

1. Set up cabins and a non-damaging infrastructure for short-term rentals
2. Set up permanent non-invasive structures for permanent/long-term living
3. Set up areas for camping
4. Set up a small forest spa
5. Organize health events such as meditation and forest bathing
6. Organize tours for bird watching and general fauna & flora exploration
7. Create adventure & fitness tracks and organize groups
8. Lease parts of the land to events
9. Have a Forest School with ecology classes, mainly in the summer
10. Invite artists and establish a Forest Art Park (e.g.sculptures, light installations) to which an entrance fee can be charged
11. Work with locals & fallen wood to create & sell arts & crafts
12. Allow part of the forest to become a "Forest Cemetery" where the ashes are transformed into trees
13. If applicable, allocate areas for agroforestry
14. Use part of the land for setting up "Innovative Food Waste Solutions" for the surrounding villages & towns
15. Carbon Offsetting & Other Marketing/Branding Opportunities
16. Sustainable logging

Learning

High Efforts, Low Returns

It quickly became evident that the majority of the options for monetizing forests require a significant amount of work, time, and capital investment. While each option can generate some extra revenue on a small scale, a quick cost-benefit analysis revealed that the effort required is often high compared to the relatively low returns. However, for individuals or families passionate about living in a forested area and looking for additional revenue while preserving the land, combining multiple monetization models can work wonderfully.

Disturbing The Ecosystem

Through this learning process, i also realized that monetizing forests in certain ways can lead to their degradation and destruction. As forests become more like amusement parks or housing complexes, they lose their natural beauty and peacefulness. The magic of walking through an old forest, surrounded by the quiet and undisturbed ecosystem, disappears as we focus solely on maximizing revenue.

Therefore, at scale for me seems more valuable to preserve ecosystem as they are than adding different intrusive monetization models.

Carbon Credits: Marketing Scheme

Another hyped-up topic i researched and experimented with is that of Carbon Credits. At first, it seemed to be a promising idea. However, further research and implementation experiments proved the current carbon credits model to be a marketing scam.

The current offsetting programs are offered by non-transparent, privately-owned companies. Such programs seem to make CO2 levels worse. They incentivize consumers to continue buying, and even buying more as they feel less-guilty because of offsetting.

Alternatively, companies that choose to offset their carbon emissions do it because it increases their sales just by associating themselves with this practice, as customers would choose them over the ones who do not market themselves as carbon offsetters.

All while the companies do not decrease their emissions, and keep their current environmentally damaging practices.

The tree planting schemes also don't work that well for CO2 levels. Since the CO2 came out of the ground, just moving it from atmosphere to trees is not a long term solution, since the tree might not reach maturity because they are not well-taken care of, can fall, or they will be cut down later.

Additionally the carbon-offsetting companies are not transparent with where the money goes. I saw some examples in which the money would go to educating people in Africa, which is a good cause, but does not reduce CO2 or does not immediately help forests being preserved. Another example i saw was that the money would go to logging companies who own the land, but they'd keep logging.

Another problem is that since there is no "one immutable database", one forest owner can work with multiple carbon offsetting platforms for the same area, again and again and again.

The “I will pay other people to emit less” approach, such as cookstove programs, also has flawed fundamentals. It does not make sense to imagine the solution is to pay people to be less bad. It creates a perverse incentive for them to actually be more bad so they can charge more. Almost like a ransom.

Perhaps one way carbon offsetting can work is if governments will set high CO2 taxes for companies emitting this greenhouse gas. Thus, giving companies two options: pay or reduce destructive practices. But even this has some flaws such as a company can be incorporated in Delaware and have their operations somewhere else. The American government benefitting from the tax money coming from the Delaware company does not help other countries in which the damage is done. But even if foreign companies asked for some taxes, forests are still not being preserved.

Also, is carbon-offsetting solely related to forests? Since the CO2 into the atmosphere not only comes from deforestation, but mainly comes from burning fossil fuels (coal, oil, gas) and cow farts or meat & dairy production which are a significant source of methane and nitrous oxide, which are more potent than CO2 in terms of global warming.

This Wendover Production short documentary (opens in a new tab) is a good start in better understanding the problem with carbon offsetting.

Sustainable Logging

A few loggers introduced me to a multiple practices they do, which they call "sustainable logging":

• Reduced Impact Logging, which is mainly focused on careful planning, directional felling, and using certain machines to minimize soil disturbance
• Selective Logging, which is involves cutting down only old, high-value trees
• Cutting small groups of tree at a time, rather than clear-cutting an entire area

They also told me that these methods allow wind to spread seeds from the remaining trees, thus new ones will grow back to be medium-sized in 20 to 40 years.

While i understand these practices are an alternative to deforestation, i have noticed that they can result in a sparse, as well as a knee-high forest that lacks the beauty and benefits of an old, relatively dense forest.