An environmental planting carbon farming project involves planting or seeding trees to establish a forest.

The regenerating forest captures and stores carbon in the landscape, producing carbon credits that can be traded. Over time, the project implementation area will transition to ‘forest cover’. In Australia, forest cover means as an area of land that has trees that are two or more metres tall, and a canopy that covers at least 20% of the total area.

An environmental planting carbon farming project is implemented on land in Australia for either 25 or 100 years. Projects can only take place on land areas that did not have forest cover for the five years before the project commenced (known as the baseline period), and land that was not cleared in the last seven years. The type of trees planted must be native to the local area and suitable for the average annual rainfall of the region. The planted trees must not be harvested for commercial purposes.