Tag: Article News Analysis

8 August 2014 The Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) aims to play a major role in California’s cap-and-trade program now that the California Air Resources Board (ARB) has decided to allow the VCS to help administer parts of its compliance offset program. But the VCS has its sights set higher: aiming to help California welcome REDD+ (reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation) projects into the program.

The ARB the US state agency charged with overseeing the program has designated the VCS as an offset project registry (OPR), which allows it to facilitate the listing, reporting and verification of offset projects developed using the ARB’s compliance protocols and help those offsets transition into the cap-and-trade program. With the OPR designation, the VCS can pre-screen carbon projects, including offsets developed under the recently approved coal mine methane (CMM) protocol, on the ARB’s behalf. The VCS joins the American Carbon Registry and the Climate Action Reserve as OPRs.

“The California system is on the cutting edge of figuring out how to tackle climate change, said David Antonioli, Chief Executive Officer of the VCS. “We feel it’s time to be part of the game and part of the solution.

In April, the ARB added a mine methane capture project type based in part on two VCS methodologies originally developed in the voluntary carbon market  to its roster of eligible offset protocols. ARB staffers have previously estimated that the protocol could produce a potential domestic offset supply of 60 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in emissions reductions. The new protocol will provide “a fairly large chunk of offsets to the California program and the VCS has a few CMM projects that could convert their verified carbon units to ARB-approved offsets, Antonioli said.

The VCS is hosting a webinar on September 9 to lay out its OPR pricing structure, but the organization has decided to waive all enrollment fees for project operators that want to start a VCS California account for the rest of 2014. It will also be hiring a Director of North American Compliance Markets based in Northern California.

“We want to play a real role in this market, Antonioli said.

VCS seeing REDD

But VCS officials have high hopes for the potential inclusion of international REDD offsets in the California program using the VCS jurisdictional and nested REDD+ (JNR) approach, which features the first framework for accounting and crediting REDD+ programs implemented at either the national or subnational (state) level. The framework also establishes a pathway for existing and new subnational jurisdictional activities and projects to be integrated or “nested within broader jurisdictional REDD+ programs.

The VCS believes its jurisdictional approach is in line with the recommendations of the REDD Offsets Working (ROW) Group. In July 2013, the ROW recommended the acceptance of only jurisdictional REDD+ offsets and ARB staffers have pledged to consider including sector-based REDD offsets into the state’s cap-and-trade program.

The Brazilian state of Acre with which California and the Mexican state of Chiapas have a memorandum of understanding (MOU) has been the first jurisdiction to pilot the JNR framework and is “really quite close to becoming the first jurisdiction-wide program to deliver compliance-grade REDD+ offsets, Antonioli said.

Meanwhile, officials in California and Mexico in late July signed a MOU and formally agreed to work together on a range of actions to address climate change, including pricing carbon pollution. The most obvious area of cooperation would be for California to recognize REDD offsets generated by projects located in Mexico in its program, he said.

“I think there are great opportunities for making things happen across the border, Antonioli said.

The VCS is also hoping that the ARB will allow Alaska-based forestry projects into its compliance program, Antonioli said. In a July board meeting, ARB staffers said they were planning to propose an update to the ARB’s forestry protocol in late 2014 to allow these projects into the program.

The VCS has registered and issued offsets to the Afognak Forest Carbon Project, an improved forest management project that covers more than 3,300 hectares located on the North coast of Afognak Island, Alaska. The project has a lifetime of 30 years and is expected to sequester 1.56 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent over the 2006-2036 timeframe, according to the verification assessment completed by the Rainforest Alliance.

This article was originally posted in the Forest Carbon newsletter. Click here to read the original.

7 August 2014 | Five years ago, the Tolo River People of northern Colombia were facing threats from all angles. Externally, wealthy businessmen in a nearby town were expanding their cattle ranches into the community’s forests. Internally, the Tolo themselves were logging the forests commercially to feed their families.

“This wood is worth around three million pesos,” about US$1,500 said Frazier Guisao, a former logger, referencing a giant centennial almendro tree on a walk through the forest with journalist Tanya Dimitrova. Guisao estimates that he could take down the tree in two hours, but today, he’s content to leave it standing.

By teaming up with US-based carbon project developer Anthrotect, Guisao and his community-based organization COCOMASUR were able to create a REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation of forests) project that would save the roughly 13,000 hectares of forests that would otherwise be lost to cattle ranching, agriculture and logging. The project verified its first emissions reductions under the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) in 2012, and last year it sold 70,000 offsets at $9 apiece on the voluntary carbon market. These financial returns flow much slower than logging revenues, but they may be enough to pay for forest patrollers’ salaries (that’s Guisao’s new gig) and, eventually, to improve the Tolo’s community health care services and send young people to university.

“Our community will always continue trying to protect our forest with or without the project. But having the project gives us the resources to do that,” says community leader Aureliano Cí³rdoba.

Read the full story here, which is the first in a series adapted from “Modern day forest conservation: A Colombian community protecting its rainforest one carbon credit at a time,” by Dimitrova.

And, speaking of projects like these, we’re now in the final stages of data collection for our State of the Forest Carbon Markets 2014 report. This annual report is the only market-wide, freely available benchmark on the forest carbon market, providing transparent information on transactions and project developments. If you are a forest carbon project developer (or know one!) please make sure to get in your response.

The survey is available in English HERE and in Spanish AQUí. Questions? Get in touch with Allie Goldstein or Gloria Gonzalez.

The Ecosystem Marketplace Team

If you have comments or would like to submit news stories, write to us at [email protected].

INTERNATIONAL POLICY A sour margarita REDD remains a divisive issue in the run-up to the United Nations’ Conference of Parties climate negotiations in Peru in December, as seen by dueling proclamations issued last month. A meeting of 130 civil society organizations in Venezuela ended with the Margarita Declaration, which claimed that carbon markets are a “false solution” to the climate change problem and called market-based REDD projects “dangerous and unethical.” But a competing statement issued by NGOs and carbon market industry associations urged governments to help secure the financing needed to support REDD+, namely interim incentives for stimulating REDD+ investment during the 2015-2020 period before any new international climate agreement takes hold. NATIONAL STRATEGY AND CAPACITY Thank you, Mr. President Environmental advocates have gotten their wish with the victory of President-elect Joko Widodo, who will assume the presidency of Indonesia in October, despite the fact that little is known about his views on climate change. Indonesia has recently surpassed Brazil as having the world’s highest rate of deforestation, but the country’s new REDD+ Management Agency is developing measuring and reporting metrics for REDD+ projects. Heru Prasetyo, head of the agency, urged the incoming government to ensure passage of legislation safeguarding the land tenure of indigenous groups, which hold rights to an estimated 45 million hectares of forest being misused as commercial concessions. California thirsty for forest offsets Severe drought conditions in California have led officials to impose criminal penalties for water wasters, but could also help make the case that the US state should allow projects aimed at curbing tropical deforestation into its carbon trading program. The potential connection between deforestation in the Amazon rainforest and the drought has caught the attention of staffers at the California Air Resources Board (ARB) who are planning to consider allowing sector-based REDD projects to supply offsets to the program. ARB staffers are also planning to recommend that the board lift its ban on forestry projects based in Alaska. The Last Frontier going up in flames Forest fires have taken hold across Canada’s Last Frontier. Of the 186 wildfires instigated by extremely dry conditions in Canada’s Northwest Territories this year, 156 are still burning. The acreage burned to date is six times greater than the 25-year average, according to Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center data. Boreal forests like those in the Northwest Territories are burning at unprecedented rates, a major challenge as the combined boreal forests of Canada, Europe, Russia and Alaska account for 30% of the world’s carbon stored in land. Ecosystem Marketplace’s Forest Carbon Portal currently tracks 15 forestry projects in Canada. PROJECT DEVELOPMENT This is a monkey’s world Project developer Face the Future and the Uganda Wildlife Authority have just completed the latest carbon monitoring campaign in Kibale National Park, measuring a total area of 70 hectares. The park, located in western Uganda, is known for its diversity of monkeys and great apes, but deforestation in the past 20 years has led to habitat degradation and endangerment of biodiversity.  So far, the project has restored more than 6,200 hectares and planted over 1.4 million trees. Despite complications from rain and equipment failure, the developer completed its planned monitoring work and hopes to issue VCS offsets in the third quarter of 2014. SUSTAINABLE COMMODITIES Failing the forests? Two new subsidiaries of palm oil company PT Austindo Nusantara Jaya Tbk have cleared forests in areas of New Guinea that would be off-limits under voluntary zero deforestation commitments made by companies such as Wilmar that purchase the parent company’s products, according to an analysis by Greenomics Indonesia. Both of the subsidiaries, acquired in January 2013, had forest land relinquishment permits issued by the Minister of Forestry. But Wilmar, the world’s largest palm oil trader, made a zero deforestation pledge in December 2013 and the company should answer questions about the connection between the clearing of intact forest landscapes for palm oil plantations in New Guinea and its pledge, according to Greenomics Indonesia. The best a farmer can get Consumer goods company Procter & Gamble has partnered with the Malaysia Institute for Supply Chain Innovation for a 6-month study to uncover new options for working with small farmers to separate sustainable sources from non-sustainable sources in the production of palm oil and palm kernel oil. The company is already working with larger suppliers in its supply chain as part of its zero deforestation pledge. But working with small farmers in places such as Malaysia and Indonesia is critical because they account for 35-45% of palm oil production. Japanese consumer goods giant Kao Corporation has become the latest company to join the zero deforestation trend by committing to sustainable procurement of raw materials by 2020. FINANCE & ECONOMICS Will the coffee be green too? Ethiopia’s Climate Resilient Green Economy Strategy aims to guide the country’s efforts to become a low-carbon, middle-income economy by 2025. The strategy prioritizes the implementation of REDD projects as part of its focus on protecting and re-establishing the economic value of forests and their importance to the ecosystem. The strategy also includes reducing the demand for fuel wood through the distribution and use of fuel-efficient stoves and increasing afforestation and reforestation, among other forest conservation activities. But implementing the strategy will be a pricey proposition, with an estimated $150 billion required over the next 20 years. SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY Palm oil’s appeal Fibre plantations are the main cause of deforestation in Indonesia, not the palm oil plantations that usually take the blame for the country’s skyrocketing rate of deforestation, according to new research from the University of Adelaide, Australia. Of the 14.7 million hectares of forest destroyed in the country between 2000 and 2010, 12.8% were removed for fibre plantations compared to 6.8% for palm oil plantations. In 2011, Indonesia stopped issuing permits to firms to clear forests on about 64 million hectares, but the ban did not apply to previously issued permits. The under-story Long-term global warming has little effect on the overall storage of carbon in tropical forest soil or the rate at which that carbon is processed into carbon dioxide, according to a new study of Hawaiian forests published in the journal Nature Climate Change. The findings dispel concerns raised by short-term climate studies showing that rising temperatures increased the rate of soil respiration. These earlier studies caused scientists to worry that global warming would decrease the amount of stored carbon in tropical soils. “If these findings hold true in other tropical regions, then warmer temperatures may not necessarily cause tropical soils to release their carbon to the atmosphere at a faster rate,” says Greg Asner of the Carnegie Institution for Science.   HUMAN DIMENSION Wrestling with orangutans Renowned conservationist and founder of Orangutan Foundation International Birute Galdikas was at first skeptical of entrepreneur Todd Lemons’ idea to use REDD to save the Seruyan Forest of Borneo. “I loved what he was saying, but I wasn’t convinced it would work,” she says. But with the peat forest slated to convert to palm oil within five years, Galdikas was out of other options. After seeing Lemons, a former college wrestler, wrangling with the orphaned orangutans and after seeing how quickly he caught onto Indonesian social cues  she decided to take a gamble on what would later become the Rimba Raya REDD project. Read Ecosystem Marketplace’s fourth installment of this series here. STANDARDS AND METHODOLOGY Seeking a fair shake The second Fair Carbon Standard meeting was held in Melbourne, Australia last week, after an inaugural workshop last January. Proposed by the Aboriginal Carbon Fund, the Standard aims to promote a robust voluntary carbon market in Australia by including a minimum price (to cover costs), co-benefits and long-term relationships with buyers. “One of our great challenges will be to shift carbon credits from being a top shelf commodity to a standard commodity that is purchased routinely by ordinary consumers and corporate Australia, according to the non-profit fund, which aims to build a sustainable Aboriginal carbon industry. PUBLICATIONS The carbon keepers Indigenous people and local communities currently have legal or official rights to at least 513 million hectares of forests, about an eighth of the world’s total, according to Securing Rights, Combating Climate Change, a new report by the World Resources Institute and the Rights and Resources Initiative. The study finds that two key ingredients legal land tenure and positive government action to support those land rights are key to preventing the 37.7 billion tonnes of carbon stored in community-owned forests from being released into the atmosphere. If done right, “payments under REDD+ could incentivize governments to reform their legal frameworks and strengthen community forests rights,” promoting an often “undervalued” approach to mitigating climate change, the study finds. Under the table Ninety-three percent of logging in Mozambique last year was illegal, costing the country $146 million in lost duties and taxes since 2007, according to a new report by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA). The vast majority of this illicitly logged wood was shipped to China. Mozambique has the opportunity to access $3.8 million to establish a REDD strategy to reduce deforestation, but the EIA report calls into question whether such an approach could work given the widespread crime and corruption. All together now As part of the United Nations REDD project in Vietnam, development organization SNV recently piloted a Participatory Subnational Planning approach in the coastal province on Binh Thuan. The organization has now released a step-by-step guide that might be adopted for any participatory REDD or land-use planning process. It walks participants through preparatory studies and training as well as safeguards analysis and monitoring workshops. The guidance aims to promote a multi-stakeholder approach that increases ownership of and transparency throughout the REDD planning process. Jobs Post-doctoral Research Fellow Bangor University Based in North Wales, United Kingdom, the Post-doctoral Research Fellow will work through the School of Environment, Natural Resources and Geography on a project called “Can Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) deliver environmental and livelihood benefits?” The key case study will be a PES program in the Bolivian highlands, established by the Bolivian NGO Fundacií³n Natura Bolivia. Candidates should have a PhD (or equivalent) in economics, sociology, geography, conservation science or a related subject and experience with field work in Latin America. – Read more about the position here Program Manager, Greater Mekong Conservation International Based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, the Program Manager will work to expand Conservation International’s Greater Mekong program. The position involves developing new business and partnerships in relevant policy and programmatic subject areas, including REDD and freshwater management. The preferred candidate will have a master’s degree, at least five years of experience working with NGOs and experience monitoring and evaluating programs. – Read more about the position here Team Leader REDD+ Project in Southern Laos “sterreichische Bundesforste Consulting Based in Pakse, Southern Laos, the Team Leader will lead the implementation of a REDD+ project in Xe Pian National Protected Area and its buffer zone and support the government of Laos in preparing for national implementation of REDD+. The successful candidate will have an advanced degree in forestry or a related discipline and a minimum of five years relevant work experience, at least two years prior experience abroad. Knowledge of English, German and Lao Language is preferred. – Read more about the position here Operations Manager Proforest Based in Oxford, United Kingdom, the Operations Manager for Proforest will help manage a period of growth and change while overseeing offices in the UK, Malaysia, Brazil and Ghana. The position requires strong interpersonal skills, the proven ability to multi-task and operate in a multi-cultural environment, and a knack for seeing the big picture and prioritizing tasks. At least three years of experience working as an operations manager is required; experience with information technology systems is useful. – Read more about the position here Forest Officer, Responsible Forest Programme World Wide Fund for Nature, Malaysia Based in Selangor, Malaysia, the Forest Officer will promote Responsible Forestry practices to the forest managers in Malaysia through the implementation of Global Forest and Trade Network Participation and forest certification. The successful candidate will have at least two years of experience in forestry and an interest in forest resource management and the timber trade, and the way they seek to improve their management practices. Must be able to speak or write in English, Bahasa Malaysia and/or Mandarin. – Read more about the position here ABOUT THE FOREST CARBON PORTAL The Forest Carbon Portal provides relevant daily news, a bi-weekly news brief, feature articles, a calendar of events, a searchable member directory, a jobs board, a library of tools and resources. The Portal also includes the Forest Carbon Project Inventory, an international database of projects including those in the pipeline. Projects are described with consistent ‘nutrition labels’ and allow viewers to contact project developers. ABOUT THE ECOSYSTEM MARKETPLACEEcosystem Marketplace is a project of Forest Trends, a tax-exempt corporation under Section 501(c)3. This newsletter and other dimensions of our voluntary carbon markets program are funded by a series of international development agencies, philanthropic foundations, and private sector organizations. For more information on donating to Ecosystem Marketplace, please contact [email protected].

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4 August 2014 | The United States, the United Kingdom and Norway made headlines in December when they put $280 million on the table to save endangered rainforests. The real news, however, wasn’t the dollar amount, but the distribution mechanism.

Dubbed the “Initiative for Sustainable Forest Landscapes (ISFL), the mechanism funnels the $280 million into sustainable agriculture practices, but it ties the exact dollars to the tons of carbon dioxide stored in forests saved by the shift to sustainable agriculture.

Technically, since the payments are denominated in tons of carbon dioxide emissions from reduced deforestation and forest degradation, they are REDD payment. But they aren’t offsets, which means donor countries can’t write the reductions off against their own greenhouse gas emissions. Instead, they’re an example of a new breed of “results-based finance (RBF) that aims to tie development aid to measurable outcomes using methodologies that are less rigorous than methodologies developed for offsetting but more rigorous than old-fashioned aid payments — at least in theory. For now, RBF seems to resonate with the traditional environmental community in ways that offsets haven’t, in part because RBF neutralizes the anti-market contingent and eliminates accusations that donors are “buying their way out of their obligations to reduce emissions.

The advantages of this streamlined approach are clear, but so is the downside: namely, that RBF doesn’t incorporate anywhere near the kind of carbon-accounting rigor that voluntary carbon programs do. Proponents argue that such rigor is only necessary if you’re offsetting emission-reductions against industrial emissions, and they point out that many emerging RBF programs are designed to build capacity for offsetting down the road.

Because it’s easier to implement RBF than it is to develop market-based REDD, RBF provides more predictable (but perhaps less lucrative) long-term financing than offsetting does. In so doing, it offers an income stream that receiving countries can borrow against today, says Rupert Edwards, Senior Finance and Carbon Advisor for the Forest Trends Public Private Co-Finance Initiative.

“Financing instruments like Jurisdictional REDD+ Bonds, with an ambition to operate at scale, can harness international climate finance to support developing countries¢ own efforts, then in turn link to global demand for sustainable commodities and therefore support a truly integrated landscape approach that could be transformational in overcoming costs or barriers that stand in the way of reduced deforestation, resilient ecosystems, improved livelihoods, and sustainable agriculture production, he wrote in March.

But there are plenty of downsides as well. In addition to the lack of rigor compared to offsets, RBF lacks the framing aspect that REDD provides. Specifically, while RBF provides a way to measure the good that funding provides, REDD explicitly drew attention to the fact that indigenous and traditional communities provide an ecosystem service. They are not just receiving developed-world largesse; they’re earning developed-world income by delivering a more stable climate. That’s a powerful message and it’s one that could be lost if RBF becomes ascendant.

How We Got Here

Carbon offsets changed the game of environmental finance two-fold: first, they shifted the frame of reference from philanthropy to payments for ecosystem services, and second, they narrowed the focus from nebulous payments for doing good to concrete investments based on the measurable success of projects. In that sense, carbon offsetting is not an alternative to results-based finance, but a subset.

Offset-like mechanisms have been around for decades and some would argue for centuries. The US Clean Air Act of 1990 provided the immediate precursor to carbon offsetting. That law put a cap on the amount of sulfur and nitrogen oxides (SOx and NOx) that industry can pump into the air, but it let the private sector identify the most efficient way of meeting that cap. Long before that, however, the United States allowed the use of mitigation banks to deal with biodiversity and water issues.

Unlike these precursors, the Kyoto Protocol attracted the interest of global private companies, both as sellers and buyers of carbon offsets. It did so by having global scope, and by standardizing the measurements, reporting and verification (MRV) of credits through the first global environmental credit program: the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). The CDM opened the doors to private carbon emissions offsetting projects at a global-scale instead of remaining concentrated with the limited efforts of NGOs and donor agencies.

By 2008, the mechanism seemed to be succeeding, at least on the carbon front. Certified Emission Reductions (CERs) were trading at $20 per tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent; investment was pouring into greenhouse gas projects; and people were looking to expand the mechanism beyond carbon.

Comparing Apples to Oranges?

Soon, the race was on to create a global mechanism for conserving biodiversity and promoting good stewardship of water resources, but anyone looking to expand this model past carbon ran into an immediate problem.

“Water isn’t carbon, explained Sascha Lafeld, CEOof carbon project developer First Climate, at the Gold Standard Foundation’s 2014 conference in March a sentiment repeated throughout the day by other water experts.

Carbon is unique in that it’s an easily-measured unit that transcends boundaries. A project that removes 200 tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere in China benefits the atmosphere everywhere in the world by 200 tonnes.

Water doesn’t work that way. For one, water is limited by its geographical area and the size of the catchment. Second, water is fluid (in more ways than one): it’s not a discrete, measurable unit like carbon. Biodiversity, community participation and other development goals are even harder to quantify much less measure results.

The Rise of Co-Benefits

With these and other challenges, the idea of financing non-carbon services through results-based finance largely fell out of favor. Instead, proponents sought to piggyback on voluntary carbon standards. By tacking on best-practices for water management, conservation and community involvement within existing carbon projects, projects could be rewarded for having these extensive “co-benefits while still using carbon as a baseline.

Voluntary standards like SOCIALCARBON, the Climate, Community and Biodiversity (CCB) Standards, Plan Vivo, the REDD+ Social and Environmental Standards and W+ Standard have risen in popularity among buyers looking to impact more than just carbon in these past few years. Suppliers have consistently added these standards, and some buyers have shown support by paying above-average prices.

Although that willingness has been inconsistent, according to the State of Voluntary Carbon Markets report, co-benefits seemed to offer a viable if imperfect compromise.

Many Eggs, One Basket

That compromise, however, left the price of water and biodiversity dependent on the price of carbon offsets. When that price began to slide from post-2008 highs, it left biodiversity and water proponents in the lurch. They started looking for alternatives.

“You know I used to think that carbon was the way that you could save rainforests, where biodiversity got a free ride on a carbon story, says New Zealand carbon developer Sean Weaver, of Carbon Partnership. “But I’m starting to think that the reverse now: that carbon might have to get a free ride on the back of looking after biodiversity and rainforests because carbon has become so unpopular.

Market participants have started to revisit the past debates, but the question remains: how can results-based finance be applied to nebulous benefits that don’t lend themselves to quantification?

The possible solutions follow along a spectrum, best exemplified by the approaches enshrined in two conferences in the last half-year: the Center for International Forestry Research’s (CIFOR) Global Landscapes Forum and the Gold Standard Foundation’s conference “The Future of Results Based Finance Measuring Environment and Social Impacts Beyond Carbon.

A Landscapes Approach

The term “landscapes may have as many definitions as there are trees in the world, but the big takeaway from last year’s meeting is twofold: that carbon should be viewed as only a facet within a more holistic, systems-based approach, and that high-level institutions like the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the World Bank, and other institutions are willing to pay for innovative financing using this approach.

The $280-million ISFL was unveiled during those talks, offering aid agencies a way to adopt the concept of carbon-based payments without the offsetting element a tweak that frees them from the rigorous and costly verification and validation process. In this way, the ISFL initiative is a hybrid of old-school carbon monitoring and baselines mixed with a decidedly non-carbon focus.

RBF for Big and Small Players

It’s not just the large donors who have started exploring these options. As Josh Kempinski at Flora and Fauna International (FFI) noted, FFI is first and foremost a biodiversity organization. They have worked to develop REDD+ projects because the projects support biodiversity and have more available funding than traditional conservation. However, given a buyer who simply “wants to do good, they don’t necessarily need to sell carbon offsets. As long as their projects use monitoring, benefits-sharing and “all the elements that make a REDD project a REDD project  it still has the same structure, just not necessarily transacting a carbon credit.

Moving completely away from carbon is the VCA Platform, which has developed Verified Conservation Areas. Instead of a commodities approach, which trades tangible offsets like carbon, VCAs resemble real estate markets: the areas are all about location, location, location. Carbon comes second or not at all. However, without a carbon accounting framework the question of methodologies rises back up.

Frank Vorhies, manager of VCA, agrees that it’s a problem that isn’t easily solved.

“Nobody’s ever done a baseline assessment, he says.“Conservation International’s never done it, UNEP’s never done it, or the IUCN. The conservation community has never even provided the tools to do proper area-based management. When it comes to actually measuring performance, we don’t have any agreed metrics to do a baseline assessment, let alone performance measurements.

Recognizing this challenge, the VCA standard instead relies on the making innovation as it goes by only requiring those involved with project on the ground to have quantifiable metrics and that they be public and transparent. In this way, the standard hopes to develop best practice guidelines.

Imitation is the Best Form of Flattery

On one end of the spectrum are professionals seeking to replicate the voluntary carbon market. Where past efforts failed, these professionals are looking to succeed through sharing knowledge and partnerships.

One such case is the Water Benefit Partners (WBP), a public-private partnership between carbon offset developer First Climate, the Swiss Development Cooperation and the Gold Standard. In this initiative, water experts are trying to mimic the transparency, credibility and accessibility of carbon offset projects through the creation of units of water.

Despite the technical difficulties associated with quantifying water, this partnership currently pilots a certification process mimicking that of carbon markets. Projects following this standard would be able to issue Water Benefit Certificates (WBC) independent units representing specific water benefits to private companies in order to finance the work. The Gold Standard’s Water Programme Manager Brendan Smith described how companies have interest in water, but,“we are not Coca Cola. A lot of companies want to get engaged in the water space but don’t have the means. [With WBCs] they don’t have to produce their own project now. It aims to launch at World Water Week in Stockholm, which runs from August 31 to September 5.

The Gold Standard has also worked to develop its own landscapes approach but unlike the holistic approaches described previously, this version would certify water, biodiversity and carbon as separate forests assets. So far, the standard has consulted over one hundred stakeholders and recently announced that they’ve become a member of the Forest Stewardship Council, a move designed to strengthen ties following a 2012 Memorandum of Understanding with FSC. They’ve also developed an agreement with the Fair Trade Associate, also in 2012. The three organizations plan to work together to harmonize common definitions (like “smallholders and “pesticides) in order to simplify certification under multiple standards.

While the Land Use and Forestry (LUF) team at the Gold Standard is still working on creating all of the certified assets, eventually, “There could be a carbon area [of a forest] for carbon credits, and then in another area, you get a biodiversity area. That’s how we envision the future, that you have a landscape with different activities but also with different ecosystem values explains Moritz Vohrer, Technical Director of the Gold Standard Foundation. The LUF teams has already created a carbon standard for land use and forestry last year; water is expected to follow later this year and biodiversity in 2015.

With all these potential methodologies in the works, financing remains an important incentive to translate ideas into real results. The $280 million opened doors for financing landscapes at last year’s COP. Perhaps it will inspire additional governments to finance similar schemes this year.

Additional resources

Read the full Forest Trends REDD+ Bonds proposal here.

A colorful map of Peru’s landscape has been drawn from research assessing the nation’s aboveground carbon stock. The map portrays carbon density with different colors allowing viewers to see the diversity of Peru’s land in a whole new way and also see the value in preserving its ecosystems.

This article was originally published on mongabay.com. Click here to read the original.

4 August 2014 | Peru’s landmass has just been mapped like never before, revealing important insights about the country’s forests that could help it unlock the value healthy and productive ecosystems afford humanity.

The research — involving scientists from the Carnegie Institution for Science at Stanford University, Wake Forest University, and Peru’s Ministry of Environment (Minam) — assessed the aboveground carbon stock of all vegetation types across the country using a combination of data from satellites and Carnegie’s advanced laser-based carbon detection system, ground-truthed with data from field studies.

The resulting map is a stunning kaleidoscope of color, ranging from deep red in carbon-dense forests of the Amazon to the cold dark blue of areas devoid of vegetation like heavy gold mining areas and Andean peaks.

But beyond its visual appeal, the map provides critical information at a one-hectare scale relevant for policymakers and scientists. The study found that vegetation in Peru stores some 6.9 billion metric tons of aboveground biomass, or roughly equivalent to nearly twice the combined annual carbon emissions of the U.S. and China, and documented ecosystem gradients that underpin the country’s rich biodiversity. For example, it found that the lowlands of southern Peru harbor significantly less carbon compared with other rainforest areas due to extensive areas of bamboo. Terra firme forests store more than twice as much carbon as active floodplain forests.

The report compares the carbon storage of different vegetation types.

The research tied vegetation data to administrative units and protected areas, including national parks and communal reserves. It found that Loreto contains more than half the country’s total aboveground carbon stock, while Peru’s protected areas store a combined 26 percent of its carbon. That means nearly three-quarter’s of Peru’s carbon is found outside protected areas, underscoring the importance of maintaining those carbon stocks, according to the authors.

“The international community wants to use a combination of carbon sequestration and emissions reductions to combat climate change,” said Carnegie’s Greg Asner, the study’s lead author, in a statement. “Our cost-effective approach allows us to accurately map the carbon in this incredibly diverse country for the first time. It opens Períº’s door to carbon sequestration agreements and is an enormous boon to conservation and monitoring efforts over vast areas for the long term.”

Carbon maps for four regions in Peru.

The findings could also help place a value on Peru’s conservation efforts, added co-author Miles Silman of Wake Forest University.

“Now every person in private enterprise and decision makers in regional, local, and national government has an estimate of carbon content for every place in Períº. It should ignite the imaginations of ecologists and earth scientists, and provide a road map for decision makers,” Silman said. “The report also adds another exclamation point to the value of protected areas. If you choose carbon as your currency, parks in Amazonian Períº are the banks, and the bigger the area, the closer it gets to being Fort Knox.”

The carbon mapping process. The report says the map can be used to measure deforestation and degradation using free Landsat imagery and forest cover monitoring software like as CLASlite, which was also developed by Carnegie. New field plot data can also be added to the map as it becomes available.

 

Rhett Butler is the founder, president and head writer for Mongabay.com.

31 July 2014 | José Maria Arara, Almir Surui, and Aureliano Cí³rdoba all have three things in common: each is the leader of a traditional forest community of the Amazon; each lives in a country that nominally recognizes their rights to their forests; and each has used carbon finance to exercise and reinforce their rights. And they’re hardly alone, according to a new study called “Securing Rights, Combating Climate Change“, which was published jointly by the World Resources Institute (RRI) and Rights and Resources International (RRI) this week.

High Praise for REDD Finance

More than a year in the making, the study provides deep, clear, and compelling evidence that indigenous people and traditional forest dwellers act as guardians of the forest but only if they have clear land rights. An earlier study, “Stopping Deforestation: What Works and What Doesn’t“, also found a high correlation between the presence of indigenous people and good land stewardship, but it found little correlation between deforestation rates and land tenure. That was published in May by the Center for Global Development.

Both studies reinforce earlier analysis showing that community rights can be strengthened through mechanisms that use carbon finance to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+).

“Many countries with REDD+ strategies identified strengthening community forest rights as part of their own strategy, the WRI/RRI report states. “In addition, respect for the rights of local communities and Indigenous Peoples is an internationally agreed safeguard to ensure REDD+ does not harm people or the environment.

The RRI/WRI report contends that successful implementation of a REDD+ strategy depends on community rights.

“If a community.s forest rights are weak or nonexistent, then the community will also likely lose their rights to carbon in the forest,” it says. “This will undermine their ability to engage in REDD+ initiatives equitably, effectively, and independently.”

It also singles out REDD+ as a bright spot among development efforts.

“With the exception of some international initiatives to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD+), development agencies, governments, and others have failed to give enough weight to the connection between strengthening community forest rights and mitigating climate change, it says.

Not a Panacea

Still, the report says, REDD without rights won’t deliver environmentally, economically, or socially.

“Governments and companies often have legal rights to forests, but communities do not,” the report says. “If REDD+ payments for carbon begin to flow in such a legal environment, governments and companies rather than communities will capture the benefits.”

Recommendations

The report offered “five practical, evidence-based recommendations to donors, governments, civil society, and other stakeholders working on climate change, land rights, and forestry, which we have reprinted verbatim below:

1. Provide Indigenous Peoples and local communities with legal recognition of rights to their forest. Attention must be given to the millions of forested communities without legal rights to their forest. In Indonesia, where communities generally have no or weak legal rights, new legislation is pending to recognize communities ownership of their forests. Where communities have some legal forest rights, governments and their partners should strengthen these rights. While this recommendation applies to all relevant countries, those that are heavily forested and have weak community forest rights are of critical importance. In addition, stakeholders should support strengthening community forest rights as part of a future agreement on REDD+.

2. Protect the legal forest rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities. Governments and their partners should help protect community forest rights by, for example, mapping community forest boundaries, helping to expel illegal loggers, and not granting commercial concessions over community forests. In Brazil, the government maps and registers indigenous community forests, helps communities remove illegal settlers, and is generally barred from granting commercial use of community forests to companies. Governments and their partners should commit funds and invest in supporting communities and their civil society partners. In addition, governments and donors should include programs to support community forest rights in their climate change strategies

3. Support communities with technical assistance and training. Governments, donors, and civil society should provide training and technical assistance to communities and should undertake capacity-building activities. For example, in Mexico some communities receive training and support from the government to improve sustainable forest use and market access. In addition, governments, donors, and civil society should help ensure that people and local communities are able to participate genuinely in the development of legal and policy frameworks related to REDD+.

4. Engage forest communities in decision-making on investments affecting their forest. Governments and businesses should work together to ensure that government planning is consistent with international standards and that investments do not violate community forest rights. In Peru, the government’s failure to comply fully with international standards contributes to high deforestation of indigenous community forests. For example, national laws should require that the status of Indigenous Peoples and local community forest is determined well in advance of any decisions affecting the community. Also, if legal commercial extraction of subsurface minerals does occur on indigenous or local community forestlands, ensure that the extraction is conducted in the least invasive way possible and only after free, prior, and informed consent of the affected communities.

5. Compensate communities for the climate and other benefits provided by their forest. Governments and their partners should commit funds and invest in supporting communities and their civil society partners to increase the economic incentives for communities to manage their forests sustainably. In addition, stakeholders should support strengthening of community forest rights as part of a future agreement on REDD+. Ensure that communities receive payments for protecting their forests as part of the design and implementation of REDD+.

29 July 2014 | Five young men are cutting their way through dense rainforest vegetation in the northernmost part of Colombia forest that was already old-growth when the conquistadors first set foot on the continent five centuries ago. The silence is interrupted only by the sound of running water from the many streams dissecting the hilly terrain. It is midday, and the heat is intolerable even for the mosquitoes. Frazier Guisao, an ex-logger, heads the single-file line, slicing through the thick undergrowth with a machete to carve out a narrow tunnel. The crew is patrolling the forest to protect it from illicit clearing.

Old trees in this pristine forest reach as high as 10-story buildings, emerging well above the thick canopy, and the men sit for a rest at the buttress roots of a giant centennial almendro tree. Guisao examines the trunk and makes a quick calculation in his head.

“This wood is worth around three million pesos, he says. That’s about $1,500 USD. As a former commercial logger, he knows it would have taken him about two hours to fell it with the chainsaw. The work they’re doing now isn’t nearly as lucrative in the short-term, but it’s much more rewarding.

Preserving the Forest; Protecting the Future

Guisao and his team are wearing T-shirts with the bright colorful letters COCOMASUR, which, in Spanish, stands for Black Communities of the Tolo River and South Coast the name of their small Afro-Colombian community organization. The national constitution grants land titles to traditional forest peoples, and the Tolo River inhabitants now collectively own 32,000 acres of rainforest in Chocí³ region, near Colombia’s border with Panama. The patrol leader says it takes him four days to walk the entire perimeter.

They need the patrols because they need the forest, which feeds and nurtures the Tolo River, which in turn provides the community with both its name and its drinking water. The forest also protects animals and plants for future generations.

From Logger to Ranger

Guisao began his transition from being a logger who harvested the forest to being a ranger who protects it after a community assembly four years ago, when the 1500 members of the Tolo River organization jointly decided to affirm their land rights and protect the forest. That transition, however, didn’t come easy because there were two major threats to the trees. One was external: wealthy businessmen in a nearby town were expanding their cattle ranches. The other was internal: community members like Guisao who logged the forest commercially and depended on the practice to feed their families.

To save the forest, the Tolo River people needed to wean themselves off the logging that paid their bills and find a way to pay for patrols that would keep outsiders from chopping down their trees.

A Global Challenge

It’s a challenge faced by forest people around the world, and one that impacts all of us. Indeed, the loss of pristine forest in the tropics and its blow to biodiversity and ecosystem services are massive and irreversible. To make matters even worse, carbon emissions from deforestation compound the problem of climate change every year as much as one fifth of the global carbon emissions may come from cut down trees, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Traditionally, there has been little funding for conservation, but this may be changing, and the Tolo River people are at the forefront of that change.

The Carbon Content of Trees

An additional benefit for both the community and the rest of the world is that the trees and the soil in their forest contain large quantities of carbon, which bonds with oxygen to form the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide when released into the atmosphere.

Fortunately for the community, many companies and governments around the world volunteer to fund forest conservation projects as an attempt to offset part of their own carbon emissions. This international initiative is named Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD). The principle is simple: a company striving to be carbon neutral would first try to reduce its own carbon emissions as much as possible through more energy-efficient equipment and strict monitoring of its supply chain. Whatever emissions it could not reduce, it would offset by paying a forest community to protect the trees from clearing.

Measuring the Carbon

To best estimate the amount of carbon the Tolo River community could prevent from being emitted, COCOMASUR teamed up with Anthrotect, a U.S.-based organization that “works with community landholders to implement payment for ecosystem services projects that connect communities with emerging markets for carbon and biodiversity, according to documents filed with the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS), which is the certification program under which they chose to become certified. The organizations then contracted forestry experts from Bogota, Medellin, and the US state of California who compared the forest with other unguarded forested areas nearby and concluded that roughly 13,000 hectares would be lost to cattle ranching, agriculture, and selective logging if defensive actions weren’t taken immediately. Based on the blend of trees in the forest and their average height and width, they pegged the total greenhouse gas emissions from that destruction at 2,800,000 tons of carbon dioxide over the next 30 years.

COCOMASUR and its partners then began the arduous process of protecting the forest by raising awareness of collective identity and rights, demarcating territorial boundaries, establishing regular community patrols and developing sustainable agricultural and silvopastoral practices.

Verifying the Results

In 2012, VCS-certified auditors visited the site and concluded that these actions had saved 170,000 trees containing about 28,000 tons of carbon. That carbon would have converted to over 100,000 tons of carbon dioxide if released into the atmosphere, or the equivalent of 20,000 cars being taken off the road for a year.

While the first tranche went largely to cover the cost of launching the project, future sales will be used to pay the forest patrol salaries, improve the community health care services, send young people to universities, and strengthen the community organization. The community uses this revenue to pay the forest patrol salaries, improve the community health care services, send young people to universities, and strengthen the community organization.

A Big Year for REDD

That year, half a billion dollars worth of carbon credit transactions took place in the voluntary carbon market, according to Ecosystem Marketplace’s 2013 State of Voluntary Carbon Markets Report. In addition, the United Nations is leading an initiative to streamline REDD projects around the world in anticipation that mandatory carbon offsetting might eventually become part of a new global climate treaty. During the latest Climate Conference in Warsaw in December 2013, all countries agreed on a forest conservation mechanism to be implemented in the years to come a large step forward for conservation projects around the world.

The Innovator’s Dillemma

But when the Tolo River people began their project, REDD was still a poorly-understood mechanism, and the VCS was untested. Critics weren’t convinced the standard could both deliver the environmental rigor it promised and keep out “carbon cowboys who they feared would run roughshod over the very indigenous people REDD was designed to protect.

Still, the Tolo River people were determined to succeed and remain so to this day: “Our community will always continue trying to protect our forest with or without the project. But having the project gives us the resources to do that, says community leader Aureliano Cí³rdoba.

It is crucially important to learn from mistakes and look for successful models for the sake of the forest, the people who live in it and the global climate.

This is the story of one community that found a way to do this right.

NEXT INSTALLMENT: Meet the Cattlemen

Tanya Dimitrova just graduated from University of California, Berkeley, with a masters degree in energy and resources. She lives in Texas and works as freelance science and environmental journalist.

28 July 2014 | Severe drought conditions in the US state of California have led state officials to impose criminal penalties for water wasters. The drought could also help make the case that California should allow projects aimed at curbing tropical deforestation into the state’s carbon trading system.

California’s State Water Resources Control Board approved an emergency regulation to force water agencies, their customers and state residents to increase water conservation in urban settings by reducing outdoor water uses such as washing down driveways and watering landscapes or face possible fines of up to $500 a day. What brought on this surge in water regulation? The fact that California residents are using more water than last year with urban water use in May up 1% over the monthly average for the previous three years despite two drought emergency declarations by Governor Jerry Brown and his January plea for residents to voluntarily reduce their water use by 20%.

What may seem like a local problem could have its roots in the tropical deforestation that has occurred in Brazil and other countries. Researchers found that total deforestation of the Amazon rainforest could reduce rainfall in the Pacific Northwest by 20% and cause a 50% reduction in the Sierra Nevada snowpack, a crucial source of water for California, according to a major scientific study published in the Journal of Climate last year.

Although it is difficult to quantify whether specific weather patterns such as the current drought are directly tied to deforestation, data trends indicate that deforestation has a direct impact on rainfall in California, according to Rajinder Sahota, Chief of the Climate Change Program Evaluation Branch of the California Air Resources Board (ARB), who spoke at an ARB board hearing on Thursday. But it remains difficult to convince residents of any possible connection, especially when they dealt with mudslides and floods in the state last year, she said.

“People tend to latch on to the most recent events as an indication of what’s going on, Sahota said.

The role of tropical deforestation and the possible connection to California’s drought arose in the context of an update that ARB staff was providing regarding its planned consideration of sector-based offsets, specifically from projects that reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD). ARB’s legal counsel Jason Gray discussed the multiple co-benefits of REDD projects, including protection against decreased precipitation from forest loss, which could be of interest given the current drought situation.

Keep reading on the Forest Carbon Portal (for free).

This article is the fourth in a series. You can also view the previous installment here.

24 July 2014 | As a former collegiate wrestler,  Todd Lemons knew the look of an eager athlete ready to grapple, and  these orangutans had that look in spades.

He encountered them in the forest behind Orangutan Foundation International‘s (OFI) orphanage in Pangkalan Bun, on the island of Borneo. All were  adolescents who had witnessed the murder of one or both of their parents, and all of them owed their lives to the woman escorting him: OFI founder Birute Galdikas.

Instinctively, Lemons crouched to engage the first one to step forward. They waddled around in circles, each looking for an opening in the other’s defense. Finally, the orangutan lunged; Lemons intercepted; others loped into the fray. Soon, at the age of 40, Lemons was engulfed in a gaggle of rowdy red apes, all of them rolling and wrestling and – yes – laughing.

“It was at once the most amazing experience of my life and one of the most heart-wrenching,” he says. “Amazing because they’re better than us in many ways: They’re generous and intelligent, but they’re also naí¯ve, and they have an amazing sense of humor.” Heart-wrenching, he adds, because they don’t belong in an orphanage.

Emotional Engagement

Lemons had flown from Hong Kong to Borneo just hours earlier, and that first spontaneous encounter with orangutans provided what he calls “an early point-of-no-return” – his first emotional engagement with the orangs of the hutan – the “people of the forest” in the languages of both Indonesia and Malaysia. It also provided Galdikas with an opportunity to learn a bit about this hyperactive businessman who’d called her just a week earlier with a crazy plan to save the forest and had now shown up on her doorstep unannounced.

“I realized then that Todd loves the orangutans,” says Galdikas. “He still gets down and wrestles with them and rolls around like they do – it’s the most wonderful thing.”

Lemons would return to the orphanage scores of times in the coming years – sometimes alone, and sometimes with his Indonesian partner, Rusmin Widjajam, or with his American partner, Jim Procanik. Often they’d come for business, but just as often they’d come for respite from the David and Goliath struggle they found themselves enmeshed in as they struggled to save the forest.

“In my darkest hours throughout our epic five-year battle, I went back to the care center many times to strengthen my resolve,” says Lemons.

Muddling Through It

Impressed by the way Lemons connected with the orangutans, Galdikas asked him to accompany her on a boat ride to Camp Leakey, the rescue facility she built in the early 1970s with the support of her mentor, primatologist Louis Leakey. Lemons soon found himself teetering along underwater balance beams that served as a sort of jungle boardwalk in the dry season – which this wasn’t.

“I was surprised at the grace with which Birute navigated the slippery, unseen boards knee-deep,” he says. “I kept slipping off and spent half my time up to my chest in swamp water.” It was, he says, a visceral re-connection with the elements he’d always sought as a child but only found intermittently as an adult.

“I got my start in the Amazon, but I’d spent the past five years of my life manufacturing widgets in China,” he says. “Now I was back in the forest with a meaningful purpose, with wild-born orangutans, and with a world-renowned scientist who had made the cover of National Geographic twice.”

It was, he thought, a life his grandfather would approve of.

How the World Works

He and Galdikas spent the evening at Camp Leaky under a solitary solar-powered light bulb – in a setting that Lemons describes as “epic”.

“Up to then, I had looked at this from an academic and economic viewpoint,” he says. “Now, it was taking on profound philosophical tones. I began to feel like I could really make a difference in the world that my kids would inherit.”

Galdikas, however, still wasn’t sold. She’d hosted more than her share of wide-eyed idealists and overconfident businessmen over the years, and very few of them ended up doing anything of value for the orangutans. With the Seruyan Forest disappearing just over the horizon, she needed someone who not only wanted to make a difference but had both the smarts to get it done and the fortitude to see it through.

“I could feel Todd’s sincerity, but I still thought he was naí¯ve,” says Galdikas. “Nobody who’s not a native-born person will ever understand a new country completely.”

Lemons begs to differ. In his mind, Galdikas is more Indonesian than anything, even though she grew up in Canada. “She sometimes calls me ‘Mr. Todd’ – the way Indonesians call someone ‘Pak’ so-and-so,” he says. “She loves this country the way certain immigrants to the United States love their adopted home.”

She lectured Lemons on the value that Indonesians place on politeness, hierarchy and rules; and she warned him that the brashness that gets you to the top in California would come across as oafish on Kalimantan, the Indonesian word for Borneo. Lemons told Galdikas about his career in forestry, and how he’d navigated the cultures of Latin America and China. He said he was tired of the rat-race and was looking forward to working with conservationists and other “civilized” folk.

Her response took him aback.

“She read me the riot act,” says Lemons. “She told me that compared to doing business in China, doing conservation in Indonesia was a snake pit.”

Galdikas told him not to idealize the world of conservation. “There are some wonderful people in this field – some of the best I’ve ever met,” she says. “But I told him that when you start dealing with some of the big conservation groups, the fundraising tail is wagging the conservation dog.”

What’s more, she added, those dogs only see one pie of funding. “They’re all fighting over that pie behind the scenes,” she says.

Lemons countered that REDD would change all that because it would make the pie bigger.

A New Conservation Paradigm

REDD, he said, was part of a whole new economic paradigm built on the premise that our economy depends on our ecology, and that good land stewardship delivers a higher economic value than palm oil does. While some blamed market mechanisms for all the world’s ills, Lemons saw markets as a powerful but amoral tool that sometimes needed direction. REDD, he said, directed the power of the market into conservation.

“I loved what he was saying, but I wasn’t convinced it would work,” she says. “I knew there’d be opposition from people who don’t like markets, and so did he, but I also knew that a lot of the traditional conservationists would see him as treading on their turf.” As an anthropologist, she told Lemons, she’d learned a few things about turf wars, and she warned him it wouldn’t be pretty.

“It was an amazing lecture, about NGO culture and business culture and about Indonesian culture and North American culture,” says Lemons. “She was married to a Dyak chief, and as an anthropologist who straddles two cultures, she really understands the cosmology of the Indonesian people and how that cultural and historical worldview shapes the way they behave.”

As a Canadian, she also understood where Lemons was coming from, and she pointed out how his own cultural and historical worldview conditioned him to seek consistency, while Javanese cosmology embraced paradox.

“She gave me amazing advice early on that I didn’t even understand at the time,” he says. “But it rang clear and true as I found myself immersed in a very complex and foreign culture.”

Still, it was the ideological differences between the business world and the nonprofit world that he found most challenging – differences that he says he should have seen by the way REDD had evolved.

Chasms and Camaraderie

Long before there was REDD and its efforts to pay for the protection of trees based on their carbon content, there was the timber trade, which paid for forests based on their “merchantable” wood content. In order to pay for that merchantable wood, they had to measure it, and they became incredibly adept at doing so. After all, millions of dollars were at stake on every transaction, and they wanted to get it right. Lemons came from that world, and when he heard of REDD, he assumed the powers-that-be would just adopt the calculus of timber to save the forest rather than destroy it. He was wrong.

Galdikas, meanwhile, was beginning to think Lemons might actually be able to get the job done – not because of anything he said, but because of something he did.

“As we sat around barefoot on the floor with the Camp Leakey staff, Todd immediately picked up on the cultural taboo of exposing the bottom of ones feet to the other guests,” says Galdikas. “Also, they have a custom that when somebody in the group gets up, they kind of hunch over so as not to tower over the other guests.”

Like the ubiquitous Western handshake, the Indonesian hunch is a modern custom with traditional roots: the Dyaks of Indonesia always kept their heads lower than that of the king’s, and today it’s just good manners. Galdikas says that Lemons picked up on that right away, too. “That’s when I realized he might have a chance at navigating the complexities of Indonesian society,” she says.

But Lemons had questions of his own.

The Peat Bog Wild Card

His questions weren’t about Galdikas – after all, she was a public figure, and he’d researched her thoroughly – but he’d been spooked by those scraggly trees that dominated the landscape. “I came from a forestry background, and I knew those trees didn’t hold enough carbon to cover the cost of measuring them,” he says.

He had a list of criteria that would have to be met if this thing was going to work commercially: the forest would have to be in danger (check). It would have to be home to an endangered species (check). It would have to contain massive amounts of carbon (question mark).

Lemons knew that Kalimantan’s carbon was locked in peat bogs, because those bogs made headlines around the world when the El Nií±o draught lit them up  in 1997 and 2003. On satellite images, those bogs looked like smoke bombs, and scientists estimated they pumped 200 million tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere  in 1997 alone. That translates into 734 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in the air, or the equivalent of 180 million extra cars on the road.

“I know there are peat forests on Kalimantan,” Lemons told Galdikas. “But where are they?”

“We’ve been knee-deep in one all day,” she laughed. “Well, I’ve been knee-deep; you’ve been neck-deep – but it’s the same forest, just on the other side of the park.”

And that, says Lemons, is when it all finally fell into place. “Somehow, I had stumbled into a peat swamp forest that provided a critical buffer zone to a national park, home to one of maybe four remaining forests with high-density relic populations of wild orangutans,” he says. “My potential partner was a conservation rock star, and if there was ever a forest that met the definition of being under ‘imminent threat’, this was it.”

This forest, he told her, had environmental value, and REDD made it possible to convert that to economic value. Economically, he said, it wasn’t worth more alive than dead, but it was worth enough alive that they could use REDD to save it.

“We’ve been trying to save the Seruyan for seven years, and I’m out of options,” she said. “They’ve given it to palm oil, and in five years, it will be gone. If the entire eastern border goes to palm oil, they’ll deforest half the national park. They’ve already illegally deforested 2,000 hectares of the northern quadrant.”

She paused.

“OK,” she said. “Let’s do it. If you can save this forest, you’ll make a believer out of me.”

Next Installment: Birute visits the Minister of Forestry while Todd dives into the calculus of REDD.

This article was originally posted in the V-Carbon newsletter. Click here to read the original.

25 July 2014 | Is New Zealand next? Australia disappointed carbon market advocates last week when its national legislature voted to scrap the country’s carbon tax and planned emissions trading system (ETS). The AU$23 carbon tax incentivized significant pre-compliance offset purchases in 2012. Ecosystem Marketplace’s State of the Voluntary Carbon Markets 2013 report accounted for five million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO2e) in offset transactions that did not see a repeat in this year’s report. Australia’s offset market will likely be replaced with an “Emissions Reduction Fund,” which would serve as a reverse auction for the government to buy from competing sellers.

Having already opted out of the Kyoto Protocol’s second phase, New Zealand is contemplating going the way of its Oceania neighbor and abolishing its ETS. The future of the NZ market rests with a general election in September. If the ruling National Party retains the power to form a government, then no change to the system is expected. The speculation has pressured prices on the NZ ETS over the last month.

However, there is life after Kyoto as Japan’s J-Credit System shows. The system combines the two prior offset standards: the Japan Domestic Clean Development Mechanism program that offered local certification of businesses’ emissions reductions, and Japan’s Verified Emissions Reduction System, which verified domestic project offsets. Ecosystem Marketplace’s Kelley Hamrick spoke with Noriko Hase from the Overseas Environmental Cooperation Center about the improvements made by streamlining the two programs into one all-inclusive standard in 2013 and the potential effect on demand for voluntary offsets in the country.

These and other stories from the voluntary carbon marketplace are summarized below, so keep reading!

For the fifth year running, Forest Trends’ Ecosystem Marketplace is collecting data about forest carbon projects around the world to include in our State of the Forest Carbon Markets 2014 report. This is the only market-wide, freely available research tracking performance-based payments for emissions reductions in forests, and we rely on a global survey to ensure that our data is representative.

Help us spread the word!

Our survey for forest carbon project developers is available in English HERE and in Spanish HERE.

Every year, Ecosystem Marketplace relies wholly on offset market participants to financially support the State of research. In return, sponsors ($7.5k+) and supporters ($3k) benefit from the report’s growing exposure, early insight into our findings, and opportunities to engage directly with Ecosystem Marketplace in report-related outreach and events. Interested organizations should contact Molly Peters-Stanley.

The Editors

For comments or questions, please email: [email protected]

Voluntary Carbon Offsets for everyone The United Nations (UN) Climate Change Secretariat recently launched a campaign to allow everyone to purchase certified emission reductions (CERs) to increase demand for Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) offsets. The secretariat’s staff and their families are the first eligible to offset their personal greenhouse gas emissions with CERs, via a fund that provides dedicated financing to projects building climate resilience in 40 countries. Local governments and other individuals will be allowed to participate in the future. CERs are produced by projects in developing countries registered under the UN’s CDM offset program, which has struggled with declining demand and low pricing in recent years. Read more here   Like a rock Chevrolet will purchase 100,000 tonnes of carbon offsets generated by voluntarily implementing nitrous oxide abatement technologies at a CF Industries Holdings nitrogen manufacturing facility in Mississippi. The Terra Yazoo City #9 project is listed with the Climate Action Reserve under its Nitric Acid Production Project Protocol and the deal was brokered by ClimeCo. Chevrolet will retire the offsets as part of its Carbon Reduction Initiative, which features a goal of reducing eight million tCO2e. CF Industries will donate the net proceeds of $600,000 to the National FFA Foundation to support excellence in farmer education and fertilizer best management practices. Read more here   Bambi would be proud The Walt Disney Company struck a deal with the Bethlehem Authority to buy forest carbon offsets from a nearly 20,000-acre project in Pennsylvania. The 4-year deal will bring in $140,000 to $170,000 annually, which the Bethlehem Authority will use to improve its aging water system and protect the forested watershed of Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains. The project is developed by Blue Source under a Verified Carbon Standard methodology and registered with Markit. It will generate just under 25,000 tCO2e in annual estimated emission reductions. Disney is one of the largest purchasers of offsets in the voluntary carbon markets, retiring 457,882 tCO2e in 2013 and 433,677 tCO2e in 2012, according to company data.  Read more here   Dialing down emissions The Mobile World Congress 2014 has been certified carbon neutral by the Spanish Association for Standardisation and Certification, AENOR. The annual conference in Barcelona, Spain offset approximately 165,000 tCO2e with the assistance of project developer Factor CO2. Conference organizer GSMA purchased CDM offsets from the Dongliuxi Erji Hydropower project in the Hubei province of China, bundled wind power projects in the Indian state of Rajasthan, and the Olkaria II Geothermal Expansion Project in Kenya. Read the press release More from AENOR   The final score Sixteen companies donated 545,500 CERs in response to Brazil’s “Low Carbon World Cup Initiative”. The Brazilian government offered publicity in official documents in exchange for CERs based in Brazil. The program’s goal was to offset the 1.4 million tCO2e associated with the event’s stadium construction, local transportation, and fossil fuel electricity consumption. The top donor was Tractebel Energia a division of French utility GDF Suez with 105,000 CERs, followed by chemical manufacturer Solvay Rhodia with 100,000 CERs. Read more here   Scaling the mountains The Appalachian Mountain Club has sold over 100,000 offsets from its Katahdin Iron Works conservation property in Maine to The Climate Trust, which is using the offsets to fulfill its obligations under an initiative to address carbon emissions from fossil fuel plants in Massachusetts. The offsets were verified under the Climate Action Reserves Forest Project Protocol. Proceeds from the sale will benefit projects such as the Maine Woods Initiative, a strategy for land conservation in the 100-Mile Wilderness region. The strategy addresses regional ecological and economic needs through outdoor recreation, resource protection, sustainable forestry, and community partnerships. Read the press release   Compliance Carbon Going above and beyond The Norwegian Carbon Procurement Facility (NorCaP) has closed its first call for proposals and is expected to purchase 21 million CERs at an above-market average value of nearly $3.1 each. The principal objective of NorCaP is to prevent the reversal of emission reduction activities by obtaining offsets from projects whose survival or continued emission reductions depend on a higher carbon price than achievable under current market conditions. The offsets will be purchased from 13 different projects and used to help meet the country’s obligations under the Kyoto Protocol. A second call for proposals is anticipated in September 2014. Read more here   Out of Africa Vitol, Bunge and Shell Trading have purchased over 3.5 million CERs from African carbon offsets developer Ecosur Afrique. The companies will buy around 510,000 CERs annually for at least the next seven years, with closing prices determined at the time of delivery to the final customers. The offsets will be sourced from five clean energy projects: four in Burundi and one in Uganda. Read more here   Backed by the Crown The British High Commission in South Africa awarded Johannesburg-based Promethium Carbon a grant to help prepare local companies for the country’s forthcoming carbon tax, which is expected to start at $11.2/tCO2e in 2016. The program includes the option to utilize offsets for compliance with the tax and Promethium will use the grant to start a pilot trading market for carbon offsets on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange next year. Promethium estimates the initial prices for South African offsets in the range of $7.5-$9.4 per tonne. The value of the grant was not disclosed. Read more here   Give me just a little more time South Korean Ministries will move to delay the country’s ETS scheduled to start in January 2015. Officials will take an unspecified time to recalculate the “business as usual levels to ease pressure on industry. The ETS has been opposed by business groups such as the Federation of Korean Industries. The matter now goes before the National Assembly where the likelihood of passing revised legislation is uncertain. Read more here   Science & Technology Don’t let the carbon escape Construction has started on the first commercial-scale post-combustion carbon capture and storage (CCS) project in the United States. The Petra Nova CCS and enhanced oil recovery project is being developed via a partnership between NRG Energy, JX Nippon and the Department of Energy, which contributed $167 million. The project is located at a NRG Energy coal-fired power plant in Texas and aims to capture 1.4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually. The CO2 will be pumped through an 80-mile pipeline to the West Ranch Oil Field and injected into the ground to boost oil production and store the power plant’s carbon. Read more here Climate Policy Associate – The Climate Reality Project Based in Washington, DC, the Climate Policy Associate will be responsible for tracking, analyzing and evaluating international and US climate policy and politics for the Science and Solutions Team. Ideal candidates will have a master’s degree plus two to three years of work experience in climate policy, with a particular emphasis on international climate policy and familiarity with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change process. Read more here   Climate and Air Legislative Affairs Manager – Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) Based in Washington, DC, the Climate and Air Legislative Affairs Manager will serve as point person in identifying, developing, and overseeing execution of legislative strategies to advance EDF’s climate and air priorities. Successful candidates should have an advanced degree and at least seven years of policy experience, including experience working with senior Congressional and Administration officials, and coalitions of national-level interest groups and associations. Read more here   REDD+ Team Leader – Österreichische Bundesforste Based in Pakse, Laos, the REDD+ Team Leader will be responsible for implementation of a REDD+ project in Xe Pian National Protected Area and its buffer zone. Preferred candidates will have an advanced degree in forestry with a minimum of five years of relevant work experience. Ideal language skills include English, German and Lao.– Read more here   Practice Area Team Leader, Climate Change Adaptation – Engility Based in Alexandria, Virginia, the Climate Change Adaptation Team Leader will head the organization’s business development and ongoing US Agency for International Development (USAID) programs in climate change adaptation, resilience, urban infrastructure, and environmental services. Ideal candidates will have a master’s degree in an area relating to climate change, urban development, or environmental issues with 10 years of relevant experience. Previous USAID experience is required.– Read more here   Senior Advisor Climate Adaptation & Disaster Risk Reduction – Deltares Based in Delft, Netherlands, the Senior Advisor will conduct international research studies and implement projects on the adaptation of water management to climate change, flood risk management and disaster risk reduction. Successful candidates will have an advanced degree in hydrology, civil engineering, physical geography, or similar field of study with 10 years of international experience in water management. Fluency in English is required and knowledge of French, Spanish or Portuguese is preferred.– Read more here ABOUT THE ECOSYSTEM MARKETPLACEEcosystem Marketplace is a project of Forest Trends, a tax-exempt corporation under Section 501(c)3. This newsletter and other dimensions of our voluntary carbon markets program are funded by a series of international development agencies, philanthropic foundations, and private sector organizations. For more information on donating to Ecosystem Marketplace, please contact [email protected].