The American Forest Foundation (AFF) announced that it has signed a 15-year contract with Netflix, with the entertainment giant committing to purchase verified carbon credits produced through AFF’s Afforestation, Reforestation, and Revegetation (ARR) carbon project, aimed at transitioning underused fields in the U.S. South into forests.
Chartered in 1981, the American Forest Foundation is a national conservation organization, working with family forest owners to deliver conservation impact through programs aimed at implementing forest management practices to care for the health and productivity of their woodlands.
The new agreement with Netflix will support AFF’s ARR project, Fields & Forests (F&F), which partners with family landowners to transition their underused fields to thriving, working forests. The program targets small-acreage landowners who have historically been locked out of the voluntary carbon market due to high upfront costs and programmatic complexity, making the project accessible by paying and handling all site preparation and tree planting, and providing landowners with ongoing technical support and annual payments throughout their 30-year contracts.
The F&F project has enrolled 2,500 acres of family-owned lands to date, and aims to enroll 75,000 acres by 2032, estimated to produce 4.8 million carbon credits.
According to AFF, Netflix’s investment will help launch the first 6,000 acres and expand the project across the U.S South. AFF added that Netflix provided critical early-stage financing for F&F through milestone prepayments, an innovative financing approach that ties upfront financial support to key milestones such as acres enrolled, milestone prepayments.
John Ringer, Senior Director of Project Finance and Environmental Markets at AFF, said:
“Netflix’s partnership shows what’s possible when business and nature come together. With the right investment and science, natural climate solutions can be both a powerful and credible tool to address our most pressing conservation challenges. We’re grateful for Netflix’s leadership, and we invite other companies to follow their lead by investing in new approaches that support America’s rural communities and family-owned forests.”
