A draft version of a new set of standards to cover the implementation of REDD, or avoided deforestation, programmes has been released by the Climate, Community & Biodiversity Alliance (CCBA), a carbon project standards provider, and aid group CARE International.
The CCBA and CARE offer the REDD+ Social & Environmental Standards to governments, NGOs, financing agencies and other stakeholders to inform the design of
REDD and wider forest carbon projects in regard to indigenous rights, local communities and biodiversity co-benefits.
REDD, or Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation, is the term given to emerging initiatives to cut greenhouse gas emissions from forest clearing. Still under development, this could be via carbon market mechanisms, a centralised fund-based approach at government level, or a combination of both. ‘REDD+’ refers to the extra consideration beyond reducing greenhouse emissions given to wider environmental aims of sustainable forest management and reforestation in developing countries. Efforts to agree a coordinated international approach for REDD and REDD-plus are part of the current UN climate negotiations.
The CCBA already has
a design standard for individual forestry and land-use projects, including REDD, in the voluntary carbon market. But Joanna Durbin, director of the CCBA, says the new REDD+ SE standards are more for government-led programmes involving policies and measures at a regional or national level under any fund or market-based approach that emerges.
Given that such wide-scale programmes may involve site specific REDD projects, there may be some overlap with REDD+ SE and the CCB project standard. But there is no reason why the CCB Standards can’t be used as one of the mechanisms that governments use to help them to conform to the REDD+ SE Standards, Durbin said.
Durbin says the CCBA is not promoting the adoption of the standard in the regulatory framework for REDD being developed by the UNFCCC. But “it is possible that some of this advance work on standards will prove helpful in those negotiations,” Durbin told Carbon Positive. “We are designing the standards for voluntary adoption by REDD governments to help them build support for their REDD-plus programs,” she said.
Like the CCB Standards, REDD+ SE follow a qualitative approach setting out the basic principles a REDD programme would need to follow to ensure people’s rights and environmental impacts are properly recognised and accounted for. The eight principles, and criteria for the minimum requirements in meeting them, were identified in a series of stakeholder consultations run by CCBA and CARE this year.
A 60-day public comment period on the draft standards is open until November 30. Then will follow a two-year testing phase from April 2010 in the UN’s REDD pilot countries to refine the standards’ requirements and monitoring, reporting and verification system.
Download:
Draft version of the REDD+ Social & Environmental Standards in English, Spanish and French PDF is available at:
http://www.climate-standards.org/REDD+/