Climate 411

Progress to catalyze jurisdictional REDD+

By Angela Churie Kallhauge / Published: February 2, 2024

Boat on a river in the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest

Ecuadorian Amazon. Photo by Leslie Von Pless, EDF.

This blog post is authored by Angela Churie Kallhauge, Executive Vice President, Impact at Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), with contribution from Katie Goslee, Director of Nature-Based Solutions, Winrock International; Stephanie Wang, Associate Director, Wildlife Conservation Society; Jason Funk, REDD+ Strategy Director at Conservation International; and Daniela Rey Christen, Director, Climate Law and Policy

In the fight against the climate crisis, high-integrity jurisdictional REDD+ is intended to be transformational, giving forest communities and governments the ability to tap into the voluntary carbon market to access climate finance needed to ensure that large areas of tropical forests remain intact.

Jurisdictional REDD+ can deliver results, to the benefit of people, nature, and climate. Research shows that larger scale programs to pay for emission reductions from forest conservation – the scale of a whole forest region, state, or nation – are better able to ensure additionality and prevent leakage than are smaller-scale carbon programs. And larger scale programs do so for a longer period of time.

Ensuring high-integrity jurisdictional REDD+ programs are fully functioning has therefore become a key priority for many actors working to reduce deforestation and forest degradation, including businesses, governments, and Indigenous Peoples and local communities.

One problem is that forest nations looking to establish jurisdictional REDD+ programs may not currently have the technical capacity needed to deliver high-integrity carbon credits. This is holding back their access to carbon markets, even as demand for high-integrity jurisdictional tropical forest credits seems poised to accelerate.

The task at hand is to support these jurisdictions in fully unlocking the promise and potential of high-integrity carbon markets at the rapid pace and large scale needed to address the climate crisis. We don’t have much time. If we don’t end and reverse tropical deforestation and degradation by 2030 – only six years from now – the effects could be irreversible.

Also posted in Carbon Markets, Indigenous People, International, REDD+, United Nations / Comments are closed

Want to understand Natural Climate Solutions Crediting? We have a handbook for that.

By Christine Gerbode / Published: February 1, 2024

The Natural Climate Solutions Crediting Handbook

This blog was authored by Christine Gerbode, EDF’s Manager of Jurisdictional Alliances and Britta Johnston, Senior Policy Analyst for Natural Climate Solutions at EDF.

Natural climate solutions are essential to achieving our global climate goals. A range of studies suggest that a major global scale-up of NCS activities (that is, ways of protecting, restoring, and better managing ecosystems and working lands) can contribute as much as a third of the climate mitigation needed to keep us on track with global climate goals by 2030. That’s in addition to the many other benefits that NCS can bring to people and the planet.

Well-designed NCS crediting systems can help channel urgently needed finance to the people, communities, and countries that steward natural ecosystems and working landscapes.

But NCS crediting remains controversial, in part because it can be a challenge to understand: new crediting methods, business models, and policy frameworks are evolving quickly at local and international levels, and competing messages come from passionate voices working on all sides. If uncertainty, misunderstandings, and confusion lead to unwarranted mistrust of NCS crediting, well-intentioned actors might be pushed to unnecessarily abandon one of the most powerful potential tools in the climate fight.

Stakeholders across the climate space need urgent help to cut through the noise on NCS crediting. The NCS Crediting Handbook aims to meet this need by clearly laying out how high-quality NCS crediting can work—for credit sellers, for credit buyers, and as part of an effective and ethical global climate response.

Also posted in Carbon Markets, News, REDD+ / Comments are closed

Now is the time for companies to help conserve nature. By investing in jurisdictional REDD+, they can do just that

By Breanna Lujan / Published: January 16, 2024

Tropical rainforest. Leslie Von Pless / EDF

By Breanna Lujan, Senior Manager, Natural Climate Solutions

The clock is ticking to halt and reverse deforestation so that we avoid the worst impacts of climate change. The good news is that companies can provide the finance needed to keep the world’s forests standing by purchasing high-quality emissions reductions credits from large-scale tropical forest conservation programs, otherwise known as jurisdictional REDD+ (JREDD+).

In a jurisdictional scale approach to REDD+, a country, state, province or Indigenous territory has the authority to issue credits for forest carbon emissions reductions and removals. Due to the large scale at which they operate, JREDD+ programs have distinct and intrinsic features that enable them to meet key tenets of environmental and social integrity. JREDD+ programs can:

Also posted in Carbon Markets, Indigenous People, News, REDD+ / Comments are closed

Nature is more important than ever to realizing climate goals at COP28

By Breanna Lujan / Published: November 29, 2023

Aerial view: Corcovado National Park, Costa Rica

Natural climate solutions include conserving tropical forest and ocean ecosystems. Photo: Eisenlohr, iStock

This blog was co-authored by Britta Johnston, Senior Policy Analyst for Natural Climate Solutions at EDF.

Heading into COP28, nature as a climate solution has been making headlines, and rightfully so. Sustainably conserving, restoring, and managing the world’s ecosystems is one of the most powerful tools we have to meet global climate goals.

A recent study finds that restoring global forests where they occur naturally could potentially capture 226 gigatons of carbon, and 61 percent of the carbon storage could come from protecting existing forests.

We are beginning to realize the promise of protecting forests. Another report finds that deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has dropped by 22.3 percent as a result of active intervention to curb forest loss – the lowest it has been since 2018.

Moreover, advancements in policies and practices to build resilience in boreal and temperate forest ecosystems, along with strategies for mitigating catastrophic wildfire, can ensure these ecosystems remain net greenhouse gas sinks.

Oceans also have climate mitigation potential. New evidence suggests that organisms in the mesopelagic zone, a region of ocean between 200 and 1,000 meters deep containing 95 percent of ocean biomass, may trap millions of tons of carbon each year by feeding in surface waters at night and diving back down in the day.

We have better science than ever before about nature’s role as a climate solution, and signs of progress on very important fronts. That’s why nature must be at the heart of conversation and action at COP28, both inside and outside the negotiation rooms.

Also posted in Carbon Markets, Indigenous People, International, Paris Agreement, REDD+, United Nations / Read 1 Response

Article 6 moves to implementation, at COP28 and beyond

By Pedro Martins Barata / Published: November 20, 2023

This blog was authored by Pedro Martins Barata, AVP for Carbon Markets and Private Sector Decarbonization at the Environmental Defense Fund.

Since the Glasgow COP two years ago, there have been growing expectations to transform the market-based cooperation approaches outlined in Article 6 of the Paris Agreement into practical, effective actions for reducing global emissions. Article 6 is not just another clause in an international treaty; it serves as a practical framework for cooperative climate action that has the potential to unlock higher ambition for reducing carbon emissions and adaptation actions. As COP28 unfolds, it is set to complete the development stage of these mechanisms, paving the way for tangible, impactful action in the near future.

Also posted in Carbon Markets / Comments are closed

To make nature financing more equitable, we must understand how NCS credits are used

By Guest Author / Published: August 15, 2023

This blog was authored by Julia Ilhardt, former High Meadows Fellow, Global Climate Cooperation.

At the end of last year, 196 nations agreed to the historic Global Biodiversity Framework, which includes the goal to protect 30% of land and sea area by 2030. Still, nature is woefully underfinanced, with investments in nature-based solutions needing to double to USD 384 billion per year by 2025, according to UNEP.

Also posted in Carbon Markets, Economics, News, REDD+ / Comments are closed

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