Description
Forests, People, Climate (FPC) is a collaboration of philanthropic donors, civil society, and community-based organizations seeking to halt and reverse tropical deforestation while supporting just, sustainable development. FPC’s Carbon Market Integrity (CMI) strategy aims to create the conditions for a high social and environmental integrity Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM) for Natural Climate Solutions (NCS). To succeed in establishing a high social and environmental integrity VCM, the infrastructure, capacity, mechanisms, guidance, and narratives must be in place to support high-integrity supply and demand of credits to scale up climate finance and bring benefits to communities and the climate.
In this project CIFOR-ICRAF supports FPC by developing a methodology (provisionally, a ‘scorecard’) to capture the data needed to assess the FPC’s CMI ‘Foster high-integrity supply’ focus area. Importantly, the methodology does more than provide a score for a jurisdiction’s performance in terms of capacities and integrity mechanism vis-à-vis a set of evidence-based enabling conditions for the supply of high integrity carbon credits. The methodology positions each jurisdiction at a stage within a pathway towards higher integrity, with descriptions of the capacities and integrity mechanisms necessary for a jurisdiction to improve their performance along the continuum. The methodology enables the FPC and a broader set of stakeholders to assess the capacities of national or subnational jurisdictions to supply high-integrity carbon credits, compare different jurisdictions to prioritize investment and capacity development support, and measure progress (and reveal challenges to improved performance) across time.
The work is built around four main project activities: (1) A review of the literature on REDD+, VCMs and other relevant initiatives to synthesize the enabling conditions to support high-integrity supply of carbon credits. (2) The development and peer-review of a methodology and implementation guidance to assess the performance of a national or subnational jurisdiction based on a series of indicators stemming from the enabling conditions synthesized in the review, and inform future readiness, implementation, and monitoring recommendations and investment. (3) The piloting of the methodology and guidance in ten national and subnational jurisdictions in Brazil, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Indonesia, Peru, and Vietnam. (4) An analytical report with the results of the piloting of the methodology and recommendations for future implementations and tracking.
