This post responds to a recent report published by The Oakland Institute, Evicted for Carbon Credits: Norway, Sweden, and Finland Displace Ugandan Farmers for Carbon Trading. This report about the Kachung Forest Project omits some important facts with regards to its CCB certification that result in inaccurate statements.

As mentioned in the report, the Kachung project was validated to the CCB Standards in 2011. However, in order for emissions reductions to be reported as coming from projects that meet the CCB Standards, the project must be both validated (which entails an approval of the design of the project) and verified (which involves the systematic, independent and documented process of evaluating a project’s delivery of net climate, community and biodiversity benefits in accordance with the project’s validated design and monitoring plan and the CCB Program Rules). Verification must occur within five years of validation.

After its initial validation to the CCB Standards in 2011, the Kachung project was never verified, so its validation expired in June 2016 and the project was never eligible to issue credits with a CCB label. At CCBA’s request, Green Resources has removed all mention of CCB Standards status from their web page about the Kachung project.

CCB Standards Second Edition used by this project in 2011 requires the following: “If any relocation of habitation or activities is undertaken within the terms of an agreement, the project proponents must demonstrate that the agreement was made with the free, prior, and informed consent of those concerned and includes provisions for just and fair compensation”. The Project Design Document indicates that there was an agreement between the project proponents and local people conducting activities in the project area and the validation report indicates that compensation was made to these people: “Existing grazing and cropping activities have been assessed in the course of the leakage assessment during the CDM audit assessment. The mentioned activities will be relocated as a result of the project implementation; in case of perennial crops like banana compensations were paid even though these activities were not allowed on the reserve.”

In 2011, a CCB-accredited auditor visited the project site to conduct the 2011 validation, checking that the information in the project design document was accurate at that time and met the requirements of the CCB Standards.

The Climate, Community & Biodiversity Alliance (CCBA) including Conservation International, Rainforest Alliance and Wildlife Conservation Society and partners EcoAgriculture Partners and Global Canopy Programme have developed a new tool to help identify and attract investment and support for sustainable landscapes.

The Sustainable Landscapes Rating Tool enables a rapid assessment of the key conditions for jurisdictional policies and governance that enable sustainable landscapes. The Tool provides a snapshot of a jurisdiction’s capacity to establish and ensure effective functioning of policies, plans, strategies, regulations, monitoring systems and multi-stakeholder platforms, which, collectively, have been found to be important in supporting sustainable landscapes.

The Tool applies an objective, evidence-based rating system to assess each of the identified key conditions. It collects and organizes complex information about policies and governance into a structured and easy-to-understand format.

Landscape actors including sub-national governments, producer organizations, NGOs and civil society organizations can use the tool to communicate externally about the status of key enabling conditions to attract investment and other support, to benchmark progress on establishing enabling conditions against internationally-recognized criteria, and to build support among diverse stakeholders and facilitate planning to address gaps.

Investors including investment funds, banks, commodity sourcing companies, bi-lateral and multi-lateral development agencies and international NGOs can enhance their investment decisions by using the tool to identify jurisdictions likely to help them meet sustainability goals, to de-risk investments by providing a due diligence framework to unpack and understand key policy, legal, governance and other enabling conditions, and to identify priorities for policy and governance support that will help to facilitate transition to green growth.

The Tool has been developed through a participatory and transparent process from June 2016, including piloting of a draft version in the Region of San Martin in Peru.

For more information and to download the tool visit www.climate-standards.org/sustainable-landscapes-rating-tool/ or contact Joanna Durbin, CCBA Director jdurbin@climate-standards.org

There is increasing interest in developing and supporting sustainable landscapes or jurisdictions that meet local goals for sustainable development and green growth while also providing opportunities for sustainable and responsible investment and commodity sourcing.

To raise awareness and advance action on this topic, the Climate Community & Biodiversity Alliance, Conservation International, the Global Canopy Programme and Earth Innovation Institute organized a workshop in Brussels, Belgium, 6, 7, 8 March for exchange between landscape and investment actors to help understand, from both local and international perspectives:
• what is meant by sustainable landscapes/jurisdictions?
• what investment/sourcing opportunities can be found in sustainable landscapes/jurisdictions?
• what information, tools, platforms and standards can help to scale up these investments and partnerships?

The workshop brought together 56 people to discuss scaling up investment in sustainable landscapes from national/sub-national governments and their partners working on sustainable landscapes initiatives, funds/companies seeking to invest in sustainable land use activities in developing countries, commodity sourcing companies seeking to meet deforestation-free sustainability targets, governments and international development institutions seeking to support developing countries with transition to green growth through sustainable landscapes, NGOs providing tools, data platforms and other initiatives that support sustainable landscapes and other NGOs and consultants supporting sustainable landscapes.

The workshop aimed:

● To enable exchange between landscape and investment/sourcing actors to help understand different interests and constraints as a basis for effective partnerships
● To clarify what is what is meant by sustainable landscapes/jurisdictions in the context of landscape initiatives at the workshop
● To identify the types of investment/sourcing opportunities that are facilitated by and that support sustainable landscapes/jurisdictions
● To understand the range of information tools, platforms and standards under development that aim to support sustainable landscape investments and partnerships, and provide feedback to help them respond to users’ needs

These objectives were considered by exploring case studies from jurisdictions that are making progress towards sustainable landscapes and where there are compelling opportunities for investment and/or commodity sourcing partnerships including San Martin – Peru, Mato Grosso – Brazil, North Sumatra – Indonesia, Central Kalimantan – Indonesia, North-western Liberia, Gola Forest – Sierra Leone and Liberia and Cocoa Forests Zone – Ghana.

New tools, platforms and standards that are emerging to support such partnerships were discussed using practical examples from the landscapes, including the Sustainable Landscapes Rating Tool, the Landscape Accounting Framework, the Forest Landscape Investability Index, Trase, Forest 500, Produce-Protect Platform, Governors’ Climate and Forests Performance System , The Landscape Standard, Commodities-Jurisdictions approach and database, Jurisdictional Risk Assessment and SIPKEBUN – Information and Performance Monitoring System for Sustainable Plantations.

A report provides a synthesis of findings from the workshop. Download the workshop synthesis report here

A separate report provides links to presentations made at the workshop and a record to outputs from group work and discussions. Download the detailed workshop report here

In a nod to the rising attention paid to the community and biodiversity outcomes of carbon offset projects, the Verified Carbon Standard, the leading carbon standard on the voluntary carbon market, assumed the day-to-day management of the Climate, Community and Biodiversity Standard today. Dozens of project developers already use the standards together, and the organizations aim to streamline the process. See the full article on Ecosystem Marketplace.

The following project documents are undergoing public comment:

Project name: Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation in Seima Protection Forest
Region, Country: Mondulkiri Province, Cambodia
Documents undergoing public comment: Project Design Document – 08/13/2013
Project Design Document in Khmer – 08/13/2013
Public comment period: 1 October – 30 October 2014

Gareth Wishart is leaving the CCBA secretariat on 30 September 2014 to move to a new position at Conservation International. Please continue to send messages concerning the use of the CCB Standards, including messages related to the validation and verification process to info@climate-standards.org as indicated in the Rules for the Use of the CCB Standards.