The CCB Standard (CCBS) is adminstered by the Climate, Community & Biodiversity Alliance (CCBA), a global partnership of companies and non-governmental organisations aimed at promoting the development of forest protection, restoration and agro-forestry projects through high quality multiple-benefit land-based carbon projects.
CCBA members include Conservation International, CARE, Rainforest Alliance, The Nature Conservancy, Wildlife Conservation Society, BP, GFA Envest, Intel, SC Johnson, Sustainable Forestry Management Ltd and Weyerhaeuser.
While CCBS places heavy emphasis on the social and environmental benefits and impacts of a project, a pragmatic approach is taken. The CCB Standard is not a prescriptive, rules-based standard, rather one based on general design concepts with projects judged against these criteria on their individual merits. It offers two levels of verification, a regular level and a gold level. Gold verification is attained by delivering specific exceptional benefits; such as economic benefits to the world’s poorest communities or contributing to saving a globally-listed endangered species.
A significant feature of this standard is that it does not issue carbon credit certificates like other standards. This means that to generate tangible, tradable credits, a project developer would have to gain a separate registration of their emissions reductions with another standard provider that does issue credits. A number of project developers are indeed pursuing a dual verification strategy including CCBS and another standard offering full crediting, such as the VCS or CDM.
This adds an extra cost and complexity, which may or may not be offset by the higher prices CCBS verification attracts. The CCBS does make it possible, however, for the third-party project auditor to validate a project to its standard and a carbon crediting standard at the same time. It seems so far that project developers seek dual verification more for the greater integrity value that it attaches to their projects rather than just focussing on potential for higher revenue.
A further consideration is that generating tradable carbon credits is not absolutely necessary in order to be able to sell the carbon sequestration benefits into the voluntary market, which is disparate by nature and covering all sorts of offset sale arrangements. CCB project developers can and do enter into direct, bilateral transactions to sell their non-certificated (but fully verified) emissions reductions to organisations looking to offset their emissions. Such deals accounted for 25 per cent of the identified volume sold in 2007, according to the New Carbon Finance/Ecosystem Marketplace 2008 voluntary market report.
DownloadThe second edition of the CCB Standard was released in December 2008:
Climate, Community & Biodiversity Project Design Standards, Second EditionAlternative language versions [PDF]:
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SpanishRelated news:
CCB Alliance enhances carbon standardFurther information:
www.climate-standards.orgCarbon Positive News
Acknowledgements: Forestry Carbon Standards 2008, Nov 2008, Eduard
Merger; Forging A Frontier: State Of The Voluntary Carbon Markets, May
2008, Ecosystem Marketplace and New Carbon Finance; A comparison of
carbon market offset standards, Mar 2008, WWF Germany and Stockholm
Environment Institute.