6.5 Leakage

corresponds to 2.5.9 NCS

Leakages are negative external effects. This means here, a reduced use in the forest at one location must not be offset by increased use at another location. Internal leakage affects the forest owner themselves. External leakage, typically referred to as market leakage, can also occur geographically further away.

Internal leakage: Leakage in the narrow sense is avoided by requiring a forest owner to include their entire forest in the project, in the case of a managed forest. The exclusion of areas must be justified and it must be conservative with respect to the carbon balance. For example: non-forestry-surveyed areas of boundary yield areas, areas for sale, large-scale damaged areas according to Cap. 5.1.3.&#x20

External leakage: It cannot be ruled out in principle that more timber is felled at another location because of the sink project. However, the timber market is globally and nationally frequently interconnected. The project causes an underutilisation of the sustainable use potential at the project level. As long as the national usage is below what is sustainably possible, no leakage can be attributed to the individual project. A potential causal relationship only occurs once this usage potential is exceeded.

It must be demonstrated that the national usage quantity of the country in which the project is located is lower in the accounting year than the usage potential (disaster years are excluded). In this case, leakage is assumed to be zero. Otherwise, a leakage deduction of 10% is applied. If the utilisation quantity of the credit year is not yet known, the following applies: If the difference between the country's national utilisation quantity and the utilisation potential does not fall below 10% for the previous year, this value can be used as a proxy.&#x20

The disregard of soil carbon means an underestimation of the sink performance. This underestimation provides an additional buffer for potential external leakage effects.