NEWS

From “blue carbon” to “ecosystem services,” environmental jargon is everywhere these days. Conservation International looks to make sense of it in an occasional explainer series we’re calling “What on Earth?"

In this installment, they explore the role “HFLDs” play in storing climate-warming carbon.

The Architecture for REDD+ Transactions (ART) has issued the world’s first TREES credits to Guyana. This also marks a milestone as the first time a country has been issued carbon credits specifically designed for the voluntary and compliance carbon markets for successfully preventing forest loss and degradation — a process known as jurisdictional REDD+.

Following completion of an independent validation and verification process and approval by the ART Board of Directors, ART has issued 33.47 million TREES credits to Guyana for the five-year period from 2016 to 2020. These serialized credits, listed on ART’s public registry, are available to buyers on the global carbon market, including for use by airlines for compliance with the International Civil Aviation Organization’s global emission reduction program, CORSIA, as well as for use toward voluntary corporate climate commitments.

Several forest-related green groups and organisations have teamed up with a carbon trading exchange to urge investors to support credits from projects in regions with high forest coverage and low deforestation (HFLD) levels.

Singapore-based Climate Impact X (CIX) has banded together with green groups Conservation International and Wildlife Conservation Society as well as Emergent and the Natural Climate Solutions Alliance and on Wednesday released a white paper urging "ambitious companies to make more informed decisions" about using carbon credits from HFLD territories.