At one time, I believed that the carbon offset market would be a good opportunity for smaller North American forestry offsetters to make some extra money providing a valuable ecosystem service (i.e., carbon scrubbing and sequestration). I still believe that the carbon credit market needs to be viable for forestry landowner entrepreneurs, however, we need to be realistic about the costs and hoops required to register a legitimate offset in North America. The two biggest hoops to jump in my opinon are:

• Historically it has cost between 50,000 and 200,000 to complete the process required to register an offset. Lawyers will be required to help prepare the legal aspects of the offset document, verification of the offset will cost time and money, and the registration process itself will cost money (an official registry for your offset transactions will be needed so that businesses can claim credits through the purchase of your offset).
• In the North American market, you will need to address the "Additionality" consideration. You can't expect to register your land as a carbon credit if you are just going to do "business as usual" with that land. The credit is for you to do something "additional" such as planting seedlings, urban greening, protecting a wetland, and conserving habitat to name a few aspects that might be considered "additional". If you are going to plant seedlings and improve the ecosystem, then the cost to registering the project might balloon up to 200,000 if you are financing some of these costs in the start-up phase of the project.

One way to make the offset market work for smaller offset providers is to join forces with other offset providers so that you can register a larger offset and share costs and revenues. If you can put together a large enough offset with an investment proposal that addresses verification, registration, and additionality then your proposed offset would likely generate interest among investors on this network to provide seed capital.