The Nature Conservancy believes that forest projects designed to mitigate climate change should meet rigorous standards. To reach these goals, the Conservancy has contributed to the development of several project standards including those set by the Kyoto Protocol, the Climate, Community & Biodiversity (CCB) standards, the California Climate Action Registry (CCCR), and the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), among others.
Through these standards we work to ensure that forest projects designed to mitigate climate change are carefully monitored for the carbon they retain, and also increase regional biodiversity and sustainable livelihoods.
CCB requires projects to meet 15 key criteria in these areas to ensure they provide these three benefits to the climate, communities and biodiversity.
The CCB process evaluates projects in the planning or early stage of project implementation and a third-party evaluator determines whether the project meets its required objectives, which also include standards for permanence and leakage.
The CCB standards are considered to be among the world’s best criteria for measuring climate change mitigation. In fact, some of the world’s most highly regarded project consultancies and investors, including and the World Bank and EcoSecurities, are applying the standards to their climate change projects.
In addition, a recent survey by EcoSecurities of major carbon funds and private-sector buyers of carbon credits found that more than half of all survey respondents said they would prefer CCB-certified projects, and 40 percent of those said they would be willing to pay a premium for credits coming from such projects.
A joint project between the Conservancy and Conservation International in Tengchong, China recently became the first project to be certified under the comprehensive CCB standards.
The Conservancy is also conducting research around the world to measure the amount of carbon captured by forests. We maintain several climate action projects in which we are measuring carbon storage and facilitating the sale of carbon “credits” to governments and businesses looking to offset their carbon emissions.
We design all our forest carbon projects to provide emission reductions that are additional, measurable, permanent and verifiable.September 28, 2011