Nested REDD+ Public Consultation

Protecting and restoring forests, and improving forest management practices could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 7 billion metric tons of CO2 annually (external link) — the equivalent of taking 1.5 billion cars off the road for a year. REDD+ projects (projects that Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) and/or sequester carbon through reforestation [the “+”]) play a particularly promising role in this context. They include site-specific project activities to reduce and remove emissions that have proven to be highly effective at stopping deforestation and degradation, along with direct community engagement and the establishment of clear carbon rights which help to maximize a country’s climate and sustainable development outcomes in a robust and credible way.

Due to emerging new market opportunities there is a growing consensus about the need for and value of nested REDD+ projects, i.e., projects that are nested (or integrated) within national or subnational REDD+ accounting systems. Verra is actively advancing the development of new requirements and guidance for such REDD+ project nesting — which will eventually be included in Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) Program documents.

Verra launched a public consultation on key high-level concepts that we are considering in order to advance VCS REDD+ project nesting and proposed updates to the Jurisdictional and Nested REDD+ (JNR) Requirements to better support jurisdictional REDD+ program development.

REDD+ project nesting would provide multiple benefits for projects as well as national governments, local communities and forests by:

1. Enabling projects to efficiently drive private sector finance to high-impact, on-the-ground mitigation that goes beyond what government policies and programs can tackle alone; this, in turn, will benefit and empower local communities to protect the high-threat forests they depend on.
2. Supporting the development and implementation of government-led REDD+ programs and helping countries to meet post-2020 commitments while enabling greater greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation ambitions;
3. Providing a pathway for projects to be transparently and robustly aligned with national REDD+ reference levels and other REDD+ program elements, which will allow these projects to be accepted much more readily into emerging market mechanisms (such as the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation, CORSIA), and provide longer-term financing certainty.

The REDD+ nesting concepts that were considered would support projects in cases where a government reference level has been established under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) or other GHG program (i.e., not JNR) and also where there is no government reference level.