Tim Searchinger, the Princeton University scholar who served as the World Resources Institute’s technical director for land-related issues, is leaving WRI this month over the drafting of the first global rules for how companies count forest carbon. His exit is the second senior resignation from the Greenhouse Gas Protocol’s standard-setting process since June, and it lands on a question that sits underneath a large share of corporate climate claims: when a forest absorbs carbon, who, if anyone, gets to book it?
For buyers of forest carbon credits and for any company reporting land-sector removals, the answer the Protocol lands on will determine whether corporate climate disclosures reflect additional mitigation or simply relabel what trees were going to do anyway.
Two Ways to Count a Forest
The dispute turns on two competing accounting methods, according to reporting by Bloomberg and Wood Central.
Activity-based accounting tries to separate carbon changes caused by human actions from those driven by natural processes such as forest regrowth. The rival approach, known as the managed land proxy, treats every carbon change on managed forest land as human-caused, regardless of what actually drove it.
Critics say the proxy would let companies claim removals they did not cause, raising the risk of double counting and making climate disclosures less dependable. Miguel Mendonça Reis Brandão, an associate professor of industrial ecology at Sweden’s KTH Royal Institute of Technology who served on the Protocol’s forest working group, said the method would produce the opposite of the climate mitigation it is meant to deliver, and called the industry-backed approach “kind of greenwashing, to be honest.”
Supporters counter that activity-based accounting has technical flaws and would be hard for companies to apply, while the proxy is already embedded in the national greenhouse gas inventories filed under climate treaties. Vaughan Andrews, a senior program manager for sustainability at Weyerhaeuser, co-authored a revised version called managed land proxy plus, which adds safeguards he says ensure it is “applied responsibly.” Melissa Gallant, a senior climate advisor at the Nature Conservancy who also sat on the working group, backs the revision as “a solution that can be implemented at scale.”
Scientists on One Side, Industry on the Other
Searchinger was blunt about why he is leaving. “My charge is to ensure the scientific integrity of WRI’s work,” he told Bloomberg, saying he resigned because developments with the Protocol undermined that integrity “in both the content of the rules and the process behind them,” and because he was unable to correct them.
He follows Danny Cullenward, a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, who stepped down from the Protocol’s Independent Standards Board in June over the same dispute. WRI co-convenes the GHG Protocol with the WBCSD, which makes a public split between the organization and one of its own senior land scientists particularly awkward.
The submissions process shows how polarized the debate has become. Bloomberg found that most scientists and NGOs commenting on the two methods either backed activity-based accounting or criticized the proxy, with a smaller group of scientists writing in favour alongside industry professionals. “There were basically scientists on one side, forest products industry on the other side,” said Charles Canham, senior scientist emeritus at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, who sat on the same panel.
Process complaints cut both ways. Nathan Truitt, an executive vice president at the American Forest Foundation and a working group member, rejected warnings that companies would claim removals unconnected to their operations, but he had also complained to the standard-setter last year about the panel’s balance, asking that academics who back the proxy be added.
Why This Is a Carbon Market Story
Forest carbon guidance is not an academic exercise. It shapes how companies report climate progress, how they buy carbon credits, and how they market sustainability claims to customers, investors, and regulators.
The money is already moving. Microsoft, one of the world’s largest buyers of wood-linked carbon removal, has agreed to purchase more than 4.8 million tonnes of credits tied to improved forest management across American forestland in five states, according to Wood Central. A 2022 pilot study overseen by the Protocol gave a preview of what is at stake: forestry and forest products companies that tested the managed land proxy reported substantial carbon removals from their land management alone.
That is precisely the outcome critics fear. Jennifer Skene, the Natural Resources Defense Council’s global forest policy director, argues that a tool built for national inventories was never meant for company accounts. If the proxy becomes the accepted basis for corporate removal claims, the same tonne of forest carbon could end up supporting both a country’s inventory progress and a company’s net zero claim, with the atmosphere no better off.
What Happens Next
No decision has been made. A Protocol spokesperson said neither camp submitted a fully developed or pilot-tested method, and four independent experts commissioned by the standards board found that both approaches need more work. The Protocol is taking comments through February and will decide only after its standards board reviews the feedback. In the meantime, companies are free to use either method, provided they disclose which one they used.
The forest fight is also not the Protocol’s only front. Apple and Amazon were among the large companies that pressed the standard-setter earlier this year to make its tougher Scope 2 electricity reporting rules optional, a sign of how much corporate weight is now pushing against tighter accounting across the board.
For buyers, the practical posture is straightforward. Until the standards board rules, treat forest-based removal claims built on the managed land proxy as provisional: ask which method underlies a credit or a claim, check whether natural regrowth is being booked as a corporate removal, and expect assurance providers to start asking the same questions. Whichever way the Protocol decides, the companies that can document causation, not just carbon, will be the ones whose claims survive.
