Natural Climate Solutions: Monthly News & Reports Summary

News stories from June 2021

• Gabon is first African country paid to protect its rainforest. Gabon has become the first African country to receive payment for reducing carbon emissions by protecting its rainforest. The UN-backed Central African Forest Initiative (Cafi) has handed over $17m – the first tranche of a $150m deal struck in 2019
• Tree-tracking start-ups surge as climate pledges take root. Tree-tracking technology is drawing investor attention as the boom in planting pledges to combat climate change highlights a basic problem: how to identify new growth and how healthy it remains
• Shades of REDD+: Corresponding Adjustments, Equity, and Climate Justice. Integrity and practicality. Will accounting technicalities of voluntary carbon claims get in the way of deploying carbon finance in voluntary carbon markets that supports developing countries and communities battle poverty and invest in clean energy and transport, sustainable land use, and healthy ecosystems?
• Unilever announces first €1bn Climate & Nature Fund project. Unilever has announced that the first project to benefit from its flagship €1bn Climate & Nature Fund will be a forest restoration scheme in Indonesia, developed through beauty brand Dove.
• Nature can deliver immediate impact in Canada’s fight to tackle the climate crisis, reveals landmark science led by Nature United. Peer-reviewed study shows Natural Climate Solutions can help Canada cut greenhouse gas emissions by up to 78 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (Mt CO2e) annually in 2030—an amount equal to the emissions from powering every home in Canada for about three years.
• Small price increase in palm oil based products could save forests. If large agri-food companies charged slightly more for their products or dipped into the huge profits they make from palm oil to support smallholder farmers, the sector could almost eliminate deforestation, a new report finds.
• Irrecoverable Carbon: Let’s Protect the Boreal. A distillation of the paper published in the journal Nature Climate Change titled Protecting irrecoverable carbon in Earth’s ecosystems, provides a framework for thinking about how we might prioritize our efforts to combat climate change.

Recent consultations   

• GCF Draft Sectoral Guides: IETA submitted a response to the Green Climate Fund’s (GCF) draft Sectoral Guides on Forests & land use and Ecosystems & ecosystem services on the 30 June deadline
• TSVCM: IETA and ICROA submitted a joint response on the Phase II work of the Task Force on Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets (TSVCM) on the 21 June deadline. The final report is expected on 8 July
• SBTi Net Zero Standard: A second version of the Science Based Target initiative’s (SBTi) criteria for setting net zero targets is expected to be published for public consultation in early Summer 2021. A final net-zero framework, including target-setting guidance and target validation criteria, will be released later this year

Policy & Market Developments  

• United States Senate: On 24 June the Senate passed a bill requiring the Department of Agriculture to develop a certification program for carbon offsets from forestry and farming, the Growing Climate Solutions Act (S.1251). The bill was approved by a vote of 92 to 8, with broad support from environmental groups, farm lobbies, IETA and many businesses.
• S&P Global Platts launches VER assessments for nature, household offset projects. S&P Global Platts announced it has commenced assessments for two new categories of voluntary emissions reductions (VERs). Platts’ Nature-Based Carbon Credit Projects incorporates VERs from agriculture, forestry, and other land use (AFOLU) projects, including but not limited to afforestation/reforestation, REDD, no-till farming, wetlands management, and reduced methane from livestock.

Recent Reports