Frances Seymour

Many concerns about forest carbon credit quality in the United States and mechanisms for quality assurance are relevant globally. However, emissions reductions and removals from tropical forests take place under biophysical, socioeconomic, and governance conditions that are quite different from those in the United States. Further, tropical forest carbon crediting systems have evolved in relation to the Warsaw Framework on REDD+ as negotiated under the UNFCCC. In this presentation, Frances will identify these similarities and differences, highlight the special risks and opportunities presented by tropical forest carbon crediting, and briefly characterize the current state of debates on how to address them.

Speaker Biography

Frances Seymour is an expert on tropical forests and climate change.  She currently serves as a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the World Resources Institute, McCluskey Fellow in Conservation at the Yale School of the Environment, and Chair of the Board of the Architecture for REDD+ Transactions. She is the lead author of the book, Why Forests? Why Now? The Science, Economics, and Politics of Tropical Forests and Climate Change. Seymour has lived and worked in Indonesia for a total of 11 years, including six years as Director General of the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) from 2006 to 2012, for which she was awarded France’s Order of Agricultural Merit for her leadership on forests and climate change research. She holds an M.P.A. from Princeton University and a B.S. from UNC-Chapel Hill