After a slow summer, the voluntary carbon market is picking up its step to waltz into fall - this month seeing some unlikely partners, new methodologies and market mechanisms stepping onto the floor.

It's clear from recent reports that the Voluntary Carbon Standard's (VCS) dance card is full. VCS is in the spotlight again, this time for approving its first methodology for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD). This is a milestone for VCS, as the first of many REDD methodologies in its pipeline to pass through the double-approval process.

Ecosystem Marketplace caught up with methodology developer InfiniteEARTH's CEO Todd Lemons, who said of their recent accomplishment, "The successful double validation of this methodology gives the world a tool that allows us to shift into action - before it's too late."

InfiniteEARTH, with funding from Shell Canada, Gazprom and others, aims to develop the world's first VCS certified REDD project in Borneo, Indonesia.The voluntary market's potential benefits to developing countries were also noted in a recent article comparing the verification costs for projects developed for the voluntary market vs. the Kyoto markets.

The article offers an anecdotal cost/benefit comparison of the Nepalese government's €150,000 outlay for UN scheme verification through Det Norske Veritas (DNV), versus a similar World Wildlife Fund (WWF) project through Swiss myclimate priced much lower and developed for voluntary buyers.

DNV spokesperson Stein Jensen admits that "for small projects the transaction costs are high." In an attempt to combat this kind of market barrier for small projects on the voluntary market, the Climate Action Reserve (CAR) will this month take to its board proposed new rules/guidelines for aggregating small (less than 5,000 acres) forest carbon projects.

Perhaps as a result of this kind of market adaptation and favorable cost/benefit discussion (tell us what you think in our sidebar survey), some players are choreographing innovative approaches for engaging developing countries in voluntary market projects. See Shift2Neutral's latest venture in the Congo, African Comesa's new project funding mechanism and the Japanese government's push for technology transfer to developing countries through pilot carbon offset projects.

On the flip side, it's a possibility in any dance that someone might step on your toes. This month, IntercontinentalExchange (ICE) gaves recently acquired Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) employees the cold shoulder - the company fears CCX may be a "loss making" endeavor. 80% of V-Carbon readers, too, felt that CCX was no longer necessary or bound for phase-out. See our sidebar for reader survey results and keep reading for more on this and other market developments.

The effort represents the first to quantify the actual dollars exchanged through two key watershed conservation tools: payment for watershed services and water quality trading (WQT). Information was collected through an intensive research effort including: interviews and personal communication with over 60 project developers around the world; outreach to key regulators; online research; and research of published articles and reports.

A sample of the research findings:

The full report and Executive Summary are available via Ecosystem Marketplace or via the direct link to the landing page of the report:

"In general, the money seemed to be flowing to the right places. Countries with the highest conservation significance - determined based on threatened species, endemic species, and protected area coverage - received the highest levels of funding. On the other hand, government corruption can hurt the prospects of biodiverse countries. Equatorial Guinea and other countries with low governance scores from the World Bank receive less aid." (from the Nature.com blog )

Some other interesting facts... aid for biodiversity averaged around $200 million per year prior to the early 1990s. After the GEF was started in 1991 and the '92 Earth Summit created ambitious funding targets, aid levels for biodiversity went way up and have averaged around $1.25 billion/year. Note that financing needed to achieve the 3 goals of the Convention on Biological Diversity is estimated to be between $10-50 billion/yr

Out of a choice of 12 possible environmental/sustainability issues, however, biodiversity was at the bottom of the list of issues of importance to business. Climate change/energy efficiency, waste/pollution/recycling, and water scarcity/water quality/sanitation were the top issues for business. Biodiversity was more important to companies in the food and beverage, pharmaceutical, and energy industries.

Biodiversity was cited as being important to a corporation's reputation, mission or values, and regulatory environment (see Exhibit 1 ). Only 17% of respondents cited biodiversity as important for attracting funds from investors.

Over half the respondents reported taking some form of action related to biodiversity, with communication and actions addressing use of renewable natural resources topping the list. Also, 42% of respondents indicated taking action to develop business opportunities from biodiversity: "actively seeking to identify new products or ideas from renewable natural resources." A quarter of the companies had a formal biodiversity policy or strategy.

The survey also found "little consensus on what might spur [companies] to take action; the top choice, selected by only 23 percent of respondents, is regulatory requirements. Separately, almost equal shares (37 and 36 percent, respectively) cite consumers and regulators as the stakeholders who are likeliest to encourage action."

Finally, the survey found that tax incentives or subsidies for conservation actions were the most-favored type of 'regulation.' As well, "38% say industry-created voluntary standards on the use of renewable natural resources would be acceptable."

Read more here (Registration required for full access to the report)

The poll showed support for putting a dollar-value on these services, but even stronger support for measuring ecosystem services by non-dollar metrics, such as: number of jobs created, number of people benefiting, and additional clean air and water. Regardless of metrics, there was interest in factoring nature's benefits into decisions about the use and management of natural resources.

What's in a name? Well, a lot it would seem. According to the poll, voters found the term "ecosystem services" one of the least appealing among a list of 15 other alternatives. "Nature's benefits" or "nature's value" seemed to resonate more widely with people.

What does this imply for payment for ecosystem services? Well, conceptually people generally seem to support the notion, and more importantly, the end objective: protecting and conserving nature.

Some believe there need be no other reason for conservation other than the value of nature in and of itself; however, that is a substantial minority. The remaining majority prefer to be able to see the benefits for humans when it comes to giving their support to "ecosystem services." When the language is talking in terms of human benefit - public health and safety - the reception becomes more ample.

Then perhaps, paying for carbon credits from a REDD project, for example, would rouse more backing (financially and politically) by making more of the public health and safety benefits rather than the quantity of emissions absorbed or mitigated. As such, rather than part of the sales pitch saying one will 'pay to save part of a forest and absorb emissions,' it will point out the 'health benefits from preserving and protecting a forest, while subsequently creating jobs and maintaining communities' safety.' This way, the focus is on something that touches home more acutely, and doesn't diminish the "intangible" benefits nature provides, either.

In the end, the poll seems to indicate that "ecosystem services" have a broad base of support. From staunch conservative to resolute liberal, people across the spectrum understand (and support) the inherent value of nature for them, their communities, and people in general - as well as the need to protect it. It is a matter of how it is framed and phrased, however, that influences the extent of its acceptance. With that in mind, as the results of the poll may indicate, payment for ecosystem services is not a far-fetched concept or impractical possibility. If the concept and metrics are made more relevant to the general audience, and tailored to specific ones, "payment for ecosystem services" or "supporting nature's benefits" will presumably garner more support from the get-go, and for the long run.

Ecosystem Marketplace caught up with Todd Gartner (with World Resources Institute, previously with American Forest Foundation) to find out about a pilot Payment for Watershed services scheme that is being developed in two watersheds in the Northeast US. Todd highlights the importance of focusing on demand in PES schemes - a theme also mentioned by a suite of other US-based PES players recently at a National Conference on Ecosystem Markets (see audio interview clips here:

Todd Gartner interview

Check out this link for AFF's executive summary of the project.

Below is an opinion piece originally published in the recent SinergiA newsletter - a collaboration between five Latin American PES networks. This edition of SinergiA focuses on agriculture's growing role in payments for ecosystem services schemes, and offers opinions, tools and methodologies, projects, publications, and events related to PES and agriculture in Latin America. SinergiA is available in Spanish, English, and Portuguese.

Though largely ignored in the rush to REDD, we contend that agricultural carbon initiatives are equally important to land-based carbon markets, both in Latin America and internationally. Without agricultural components, the integrity and viability of REDD projects is compromised, and the opportunity to develop carbon projects with strong co-benefits for food security, poverty reduction and ecosystem restoration is missed.

Agriculture accounts for 20% of total emissions in Latin America and the Caribbean. Large-scale commercial farms and ranches emit carbon via high use of fertilizer, tillage, irrigation and livestock wastes. Small - scale farmers live in landscape mosaics which store considerable carbon in perennial forest fragments, pastures, palms, hedges, scattered trees and crops. The landscapes contribute to emissions with widespread soil and vegetation degradation. The largest driver of deforestation is agriculture; its exclusion from climate mitigation frameworks makes REDD programs unsustainable.

Carbon markets must evolve to include agricultural mitigation activities. Examples include: reduced soil tillage intensity, reduced soil erosion, perennial crops that maintain root and branch systems year-round, vegetative soil cover, permanent vegetative cover in non-cropped areas, increased biomass in grazing systems through improved varieties and management, improved fertilizer use efficiency, improved livestock waste management and utilization of methane emissions for biogas; and reduced fossil energy use in farm operations. Such practices reduce farm risks and production costs, improve farmer incomes, protecting watershed services and conserve biodiversity. These benefits often exceed those of carbon payments in helping farmers shift to sustainable and profitable systems.

A movement is building to expand agricultural carbon markets globally. Certification standards are proliferating within voluntary markets. In regulatory markets, a work program on agriculture appears likely under the UNFCCC SBSTA coming out of the December COP in Cancun. It's time to move from small projects to whole supply chains and large landscape initiatives that support sustainable development.

Innovators in Latin America are leaders in mechanisms which reward farmers for stewardship.

• The Regional Integrated Silvopastoral Ecosystem Management Project piloted the use of payments to promote carbon sequestration along with biodiversity conservation, through silvopastoral practices in degraded pastures in Colombia, Costa Rica and Nicaragua.
• CEDECO (Corporación Educativa para el Desarrollo Costarricense), is developing the potential of small-scale organic farming in Costa Rica, Cuba and Brazil to reduce GHG emissions and sequester carbon, and exploring the potential of landscape-scale projects for 'carbon-plus-biodiversity' that could be branded by the conservation values they achieve.
• Numerous regional projects are re-establishing or improving shade in coffee and cocoa plantations for carbon sequestration, and agricultural product certification programs are experimenting with climate-friendly labeling.

Despite inadequate field measurements in most Latin American farming systems, cost-effective MRV (monitoring, reporting, and verification) methods for field, farms and landscapes are rapidly developing. Colombia, Chile and Uruguay have joined the new Global Research Alliance on Agricultural Greenhouse Gases, now focused on high-input commercial systems. FAO is establishing a center to collect GHG emissions data for diverse farming systems.

To be financially viable, agricultural carbon projects need to reduce transaction costs, reduce costs of aggregating large numbers of farmers in climate deals, reduce risks to farmers, and empower them to negotiate reasonable agreements. Fortunately, the agricultural sector can build carbon projects on existing institutions such as farmer cooperatives, agribusiness outgrowing schemes, and territorial development initiatives. Costs can be reduced with improved local capacity for project development and management, access to project pre-financing, and simplified MRV. Latin American leaders must engage in structuring logical, functional, and regionally appropriate agricultural carbon finance systems.

The biggest news is that ARB intends to write REDD into its regulatory language - but don't expect too much detail at the outset. Kevin Kennedy, Assistant Executive Officer in charge of ARB's Office of Climate Change explains, "I don't know what level [of detail] we'll have, but do expect to have a fairly clear signal on REDD in language we take to the board." He continues, "We are committed to including REDD in the program overall, as we recognize that the eyes of the world are upon us as we do the cap-and-trade plan."

Among the highlights of the discussion was the announcement that the Voluntary Carbon Standard (VCS) intends to support the Climate Action Reserve's (CAR) development of its Mexico Forest Project Protocol, according to CAR's John Nickerson. Nickerson explained that "the effort between VCS and CAR will operate at project scale to start... and we're excited about what the outcome of this might look like." Also offering an exciting development was Leslie Durschinger from Terra Global Capital, who hinted to attendees that Terra's mosaic REDD methodology submitted to the VCS has completed its first validation - we'll be hearing more about that news item in the coming week. The methodology applies to mosaic-type deforestation - the patchwork quilt kind - where a multiplicity of deforestation drivers converges.

Considering that Terra's methodology is based in part on CDM methodologies for afforestation/reforestation (A/R), it's no wonder Durschinger had a lot to say about the potential for including reforestation under ARB's REDD definition. "There's no reason why we shouldn't be recognizing reforestation under the REDD umbrella. You can ultimately include A/R in a REDD+ framework and many successful REDD project require A/R."

The ARB's stakeholder workshop was intended to gain this kind of insight into this its questions about including REDD language in California's final cap-and-trade regulation. After all, Kennedy admits that forest carbon isn't exactly ARB's "thing": "We recognize that we are moving out of our air quality expertise and want to take the time to make sure we do it right."

While several stakeholders urged ARB to move forward and fast to create market incentives, Kennedy admitted that for this reason ARB is reticent to allow REDD crediting before the second compliance period in 2015. "We are interested in getting programs moving forward as fast as possible and realize the critical timing elements," he admits, "but part of the reason we're talking about 2015 as likely the earliest point for credits is that, as we look at its challenges, that's what seeming realistic."
The challenges that Kennedy refers to were the topics of debate among attending stakeholders, including the following:

What should be the required emissions reductions made by a host state before California emitters can begin using their offsets for compliance (in % below business as usual emissions)? ARB threw out 50% as a starting point for a full crediting baseline and 25% for states to begin creating a portion of their credits for compliance. Many attendees suggested, however, that anything above 10% would be a disincentive for participation. Remarked one stakeholder, "At probably 10%, you start to lose participation. If you require 20% below business as usual, you risk massive opt-out and limited participation. And if we lose that buy-in, the system stops functioning."

Other suggestions from stakeholders included using statistical methods to determine the point at which a state has brought its deforestation rate below historical levels, or to use offset discounting methods.

What's the best way to determine states' reference level - its business as usual deforestation rate? Participants suggesting using verifiable historic averages. One stakeholder suggested using historic information for 80% of the calculation and using the remaining 20% to account for a "turning of the curve" based on the country's political and environmental risk variables. Most could agree there are tools available and a need for reassessing baselines on a regular basis.

Should there be quantitative limits on the number of credits from each sector (like REDD) under the scheme's overall offset limit? Comments to this question were varied, ranging from the notion that limiting demand for REDD credits would dampen supply to the suggestion that international credits - including those from REDD - should be limited but California offsets unlimited.

The details of these and other decisions will be released soon, according to Kennedy: "Assuming we remain on target for the November board meeting, nine weeks from today we will be publishing our regulatory package."

In the mean time, you can comment on these and other questions from the Board between now and August 20th.

Additionality: WCI admits that the most significant changes/additions can be found in its additionality criterion. As was stated in previous drafts, WCI jurisdictions will adhere to performance standards to set baselines for determining additionality (instead of project-based additionality).

WCI aims for the most conservative baselines possible to guarantee that projects go beyond business as usual. To accomplish this, WCI will identify the most stringent regulatory and legal requirements found in any of its jurisdictions - and measure baselines against those requirements.

This kind of program-wide performance standard is intended to "level the playing field" for jurisdictions that would otherwise have incentive to weaken regional regulations and qualify more offset projects.

At the same time, regional differences between jurisdictions might make it difficult to apply the performance standard - in this case, WCI Partners can suggest alternative protocols.

WCI also retains the option to use what it terms "proportional additionality" to determine performance standards for agriculture and forestry sequestration. WCI proposes to assesses sector activity across a region (a jurisdiction or WCI as a whole) and measure change in a project's carbon stocks against this sectoral baseline.

A hypothetical example of how this works: if 10% of farmers already plant switchgrass for soil carbon sequestration, then the first 10% of carbon sequestered by switchgrass planting is not additional. Similar approaches have been used in other programs like EPA Climate Leaders.

Eligibility date: The eligibility date was one of the more contentious issues surrounding the offset system, with some environmental groups agitating for a later date and others suggesting project eligibility dates as early as 2001.

In previous drafts, WCI set the project eligibility start date at September 23, 2008. The final recommendation, however, is January 1, 2007 - the year when WCI was established. WCI hopes this project eligibility date will better capture those projects that were developed in response to WCI incentives.

Crediting period: Earlier drafts of the offset system suggested crediting periods of 10 years for non-sequestration projects. For sequestration projects, crediting periods are specified by protocol with a maximum crediting period of 25 years.

While these criteria remain unchanged, the WCI responded to stakeholder suggestions and lifted its limit on the number of renewals for non-sequestration projects. It also specifies that the crediting period for sequestration projects, including all renewals, cannot exceed 100 years.

Permanence: The WCI's final recommendations are more specific about the consequences of reversing emissions reductions (ie re-releasing carbon into the atmosphere after a project was credited for reductions). Based on the amount of emissions reductions reversed, the project developer will be required to "replace" these lost reductions with program allowances or surrender an appropriate number of the project's unsold certificates or offsets.

WCI also responded to stakeholders who were concerned about the 100-year standard for assessing permanence by providing for possible future review of the standard. Temporary and short-term crediting suggestions, however, didn't make the cut.

Validation: Some stakeholders, ah, validated the importance of third-party validation while others saw the process as unnecessary. Accounting for these mixed reviews, WCI will require that projects undergo validation prior to project registration, giving Partners the flexibility to validate projects itself or require independent third-party validation.

Opening Session

The conference opened with a message from none other than His Royal Highness (HRH) the Prince of Wales, via video message. Prince Charles knows his stuff - he's familiar with the TEEB, and he added a 4th 'R' - Restore - to the traditional Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. He encouraged conference delegates to "...ensure that environmental resilience is at the heart of economic resilience."

Johan Eliasch (Chairman, Head, and former Special Representative of the Prime Minister of the UK) pointed out that biodiversity loss poses a serious business risk. The conference goals are 1) to celebrate the International Year of Biodiversity and the progress that has already been made; 2) to challenge the conventional 'running down' of natural capital; 3) to provide a forum to exchange knowledge, expertise, ideas; 4) to capture feedback and channel it to inform the October CBD COP10.

Plenary Session 1
Experts from business, government, and NGOs spoke on trends in business and future scenarios for business, potential policy developments, etc. Speakers included Tom Albanese (Rio Tinto), Professor Brian Collins (UK Dept for Business Innovation and Skills), Gavin Neath CBE (Unilever), Robert (Bob) Watson (UK DEFRA), and Peter Seligmann (Conservation International).

Highlights from the session:
• Tom Albanese of Rio Tinto, an international mining company, has to address biodiversity issues now if they want to be around in 100 years. First company to adopt 'net positive impact' on biodiversity (in 2004).
• Bob Watson emphasized that business both use and impact biodiversity and the cost of doing business could increase as ecosystems are degraded. The business environment is and will be changing with consumer and shareholder expectations. Valuation of ecosystem services is critical. Have to remove perverse subsidies that degrade ecosystem services and put in place incentives that enhance ecosystem services.
• Brian Collins has a challenging task of getting across to other Ministers the complexities of interlinked economic, environmental, and social issues. He pointed out that there needs to be a language for discourse between business and biodiversity actors.
• Gavin Neath of Unilever provided perspective from a business that is reliant on ecosystem services - particularly in terms of agricultural sources of their products. Biodiversity has been a tricky subject for businesses because they often think "What do these little chaps [rare animals and plants] have to do with by business?" For Unilever, their impact on biodiversity is primarily from the negative impacts of monoculture agriculture, so their work on biodiversity is focused on sustainable agriculture. Three examples were given: sustainable tea estates (certified by Rainforest Alliance), and sourcing more sustainably from palm oil (they have committed to buying 100% RSPO certified sources by 2015) and tomato suppliers.
• Peter Seligmann of Conservation International noted that his organization recently changed its focus towards ecosystem services provided to people. Collaboration with the private sector (ex - WalMart) and development sector (Gates Foundation) have been paramount to CI's biodiversity work. Gates Foundation recently saw the link between health and development issues and biodiversity. CI partnered with WalMart seven years ago, and there's been significant work on sustainability issues within WalMart. Now, you don't get primary shelf space in WalMart unless its green.

Plenary Session 2
The TEEB for business (TEEB D3) was launched at this session. Pavan Sukhdev (TEEB) and Josh Bishop (IUCN) presented the results of the report and panelists responded to the results. Panelists included: Herman Mulder (TEEB Advisory Board, Worldchanging), Malcolm Preston (PriceWaterhouseCoopers), Vincent Gros (BASF SE), James Sweeting (Royal Caribbean), Genevieve Ferone (Veolia Environment).

Pavan Sukhdev noted that the TEEB project started in 2007, when the Stern report on the economics of climate change came out, and folks in the biodiversity world thgouth 'we ought to have like this for biodiversity.' "Nature is largely economically invisible." In the absence of valuing nature, the trade-off decision-making is heavily weighted towards development or conversion of biodiverse habitats. As an example: the economic value of converting mangroves to shrimp farming may be greater than the 'invisible' value of the mangrove's ecosystem services - unless a shadow value can be put on these services and considered in decision-making.

Josh Bishop is the lead of the TEEB for business report. The report is full of case studies and statistics, and Mr. Bishop's presentation provided some examples.

A recent PWC survey on business leaders' knowledge on biodiversity showed varying levels of awareness of biodiversity (value/risks). A study by the UK organization Trucost contributed a study on the cost of deforestation in China (US $12.2 billion) - considering things like property loss from flooding, reduced precipitation, reduced water runoff, etc. Another case study in the report looked at the value of business' dependence on biodiversity via the story of blueberry crop dependence on pollination services.

Chapter 3 of the report focuses on measuring and reporting biodiversity and ecosystem service impacts and dependence by business. One example: SAB Miller (brewery) set a quantitative target of water productivity (25% by 2015, with a potential savings of 20 billion liters of water per year). Chapter 4 is concerned with how to translate biodiversity risks to business. Chapter 5 turning ecosystem services into a business cash flow (eg - new markets like REDD). What it takes to make markets work is enabling policy: ending subsidies that damage ecosystem services, providing tax credits and other incentives for provisioning ecosystem services, and providing information and transparency on markets. Chapter 7 looks at various standards.

There are activities that business can do today: identify impacts and dependence on BES, assess risks and opportunities; develop BES information systems set targets and measure and value performance; avoid/minimize/mitigate risks; and more.

Plenary Session 3
Rt Hon Caroline Spelman MP (Secretary of State for DEFRA) addressed the conference delegates for the Keynote Address. Despite efforts, the 2010 target for the Convention on Biological Diversity has not been met in the UK [or by any of the signatories of the CBD]. Biodiversity cannot continue to be seen as collateral damage to economic development. The UK is the first country in the world to be conducting a national ecosystem services assessment, which will be released next year.

Deforestation is a global and critical issue. Ms. Spelman touched on deforestation issues related to palm oil plantations and illegal logging, and noted some progress and plans related to sustainable sourcing and the potential of REDD+.

New markets must reflect the value of ecosystem services. "There are some prices that are just too high to pay. It's imperative that each business examine its own supply chain... The world is going to start pricing natural resources, so if you move into this market early, you will [get a first-mover advantage]."

Panel Debate on the Policy-Practice Divide
A group of panelists spoke to future trends and policy changes required to engage business.

Speakers included Angela Cropper (UNEP), Colin Melvin (Hermes Equity Ownership Services), Michel Mane (Mane Americas), Ravi Sharma (CBD Secretariat), and Ambassador Mauricio Rodriguez Munera (Embassy of Colombia).

Highlights from the session:
• Angela Cropper made multiple points, first that the conference was 'preaching to the choir' and more effort needed to be made to engaging the reluctant and skeptical. Additionally, the dialogue on business and biodiversity needs to be more targeted and specific to translate the messages for specific sectors. The development of incentives (specific to sectors) also needs to be speeded up. Reporting on biodiversity indicators should not be voluntary, and consumers need to have this information to make informed choices.
• Ravi Sharma thought that businesses may not have been well-engaged in the CBD in early days, but are and will be engaged more and more. The new 2020 CBD targets will be more focused on specific sectors (eg - agriculture, fisheries). As well businesses will be one of the stakeholders in the development of national strategies for the upcoming 2020 CBD targets.
• Colin Melvin spoke as a representative of investors. He explained that investors can be a major barrier to companies adopting sustainability principles because of their emphasis on short term profits. But on the other hand, investors can push companies to adopting sustainability principles - which we see with some pension funds. The UN Principles for Responsible Investment (UNPRI www.unpri.org) has $20 Trillion in investment committed to the principles.
• Michel Mane explained that his company designs flavors and fragrances, a small industry ($30-35 million industry) that is largely self-regulated. Debate on the loss of biodiversity should be placed in both the scientific domain and the entrepreneurial domain.
• Ambassador Mauricio Rodriguez Munera spoke about the biodiversity of the country of Colombia. Colombia has a national biodiversity policy, created in the early 1990s. Colombia is tenth in the world in the Environmental Performance Index 2010 conducted by Yale University. One request regarding the Nagoya summit: "Colombia hopes the participant States support the conclusion of negotiations and adopt a protocol of access to and fair distribution of the biodiversity benefits in the world."

Issei Tajima, Senior Vice-Member of the Environment from the Government of Japan, spoke on the topic 'Towards Nagoya, COP10.' This year is an important year for people around the world to address biodiversity issues. One of the activities that the Government of Japan intends is to create a new strategic plan to meet the new 2020 CBD target. The engagement of the private sector is of utmost importance. An interesting anecdote - the bullet trains of Japan have an aerodynamic 'nose' based on the beak of the Kingfisher bird.

Some examples of the role the IPBES could play: making global reports on biodiversity more coordinated and meaningful by matching up methodologies and standards; bringing scientific expertise on new topics to attention before major policies are passed (eg - scientific pros/cons of biofuels); "encouraging research in neglected areas, as well as providing research and conservation opportunities in developing countries." (MongaBay)

UNEP boss Achim Steiner said "IPBES represents a major breakthrough in terms of organizing a global response to the loss of living organisms and forests, freshwaters, coral reefs and other ecosystems that generate multi-trillion dollar services that underpin all life-including economic life-on Earth."

The green light for the IPBES was given by delegates from 85 nations. The pass-off for full approval goes to the UN General Assembly in September 2010, with later endorsement by individual country environmental ministers attending a February 2011 UNEP Governing Council/Global Ministerial session.

Sources:
UNEP Press Release 6/11/2010
BBC 6/14/2010
MongaBay 6/14/2010
IUCN website 6/2010

The second project is a very Facebook-y campaign to get Californians engaged in endangered species protection. The campaign, called Tatzoo(.org) uses the enticement of a tattoo inked by world-famous tattoo artists to generate fresh ideas for engaging in endangered species protection. ...now appearing on some cool dude's bicep: the California Red-Legged Frog. Nice.

Next is a Guardian contest to re-name British species to more charismatic names. Who could forget the Hellbender, a rare, extraordinarily-sized salamander found in the US? Unfortunately, not all species are blessed with such memorable names: a medicinal lichen Usnea florida (yawn), a leaf beetle Cryptocephalus punctiger (double-yawn). So the Guardian has put on a contest to allow readers to provide suggestions for more fabulous species names. I can't find an end date, so hurry up and put in your idea!

And finally, if Twitter is your thing, the Guardian lists the 'Top 50 wildlife and conservation Twitter accounts.' Harrumph! We haven't made the list yet - follow us @EcoMarketplace and @KatoombaGroup.

Guardian 6/23/2010,
Biking for Biodiversity blog 6/2010,
Tatzoo.com website 6/2010,
Guardian 6/25/2010,
Guardian 6/4/2010

With all this buzz building, Peter Carter of the European Investment Bank drops this bombshell quote at a recent European 'Green Week' Conference: biodiversity offsetting could be "as big as the carbon market," and he pointed to the US wetland mitigation market as an example.

Reality check: the total carbon market worldwide is upwards of $100 billion annually vs. total US wetland mitigation market is around $1-2 billion annually. Others in the know pop the optimism with a dose of reality:

"With the carbon market we know what we are trading and how to tackle them. We can set a cap and use the price to drive them down. We have a baseline for biodiversity in Europe now, but it is not one figure - it is four pages of different elements of biodiversity," says Karl Falkenberg, European Commission director general for environment. (Ecologist.com)

Some of the more realistic optimism for biodiversity offsets in Europe recognizes that development will continue to occur, and offsets could be a useful policy tool provided that there is additionality. But Pavan Sukdev, the PI on the TEEB study, counters "societies needed to cease putting "private wealth above public wealth" to tackle the problem effectively."(NYT)

In related news, the EU Habitats and Birds Directive had a task force working on biodiversity offsets that has recently released a position paper. The position of the BHDTF (Birds and Habitats Directive Task Force) is one of cautious approval for biodiversity offsets for habitats and species of European Importance outside Natura 2000 sites. The task force emphasizes that the "current stringent offset system prescribed in... the Habitats Directive must be maintained and its implementation strengthened." As well, the position paper lays out principles that an offset system should include, referencing Ecosystem Marketplace's sister initiative, the Business and Biodiversity Offset Programme (BBOP).

Sources:

New York Times 6/6/2010
The Ecologist.com 6/9/2010
BirdLife website 6/2010

Michael Van Patten, Mission Markets' CEO & Founder, also emphasizes starting with locating buyers.
Michael Van Patten

Tom Simpson, the Executive Director of Water Stewardship, notes that "low quality credits would destroy a the market."
Tom Simpson

Stephanie Gripne, the Director of the Initiative for Sustainable Development, emphasizes engaging the end user of ecosystem credits.
Stephanie Gripne

Finally, Todd BenDor, Assistant Professor of City and Regional Planning at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, speaks about the geography of the market. Apologies for the background noise in this clip.
Todd BenDor

Over the course of the Fifth Rights and Resources Initiative Dialogue on Forests, Governance & Climate Change which wrapped up this Tuesday in Washington, DC, four expert panels surveyed the past, present, and future for reducing emissions from deforestation (RED) and forest degradation (REDD) and through improved forest management (REDD+).

With recent REDD+ movements such as the growing billions of dollars pledged through multilateral and bilateral deals or through the recently established Interim REDD+ Partnership among more than 50 countries, the rapid movements in this area in the wake of Copenhagen have earned REDD+ front-runner status on the global climate agenda and appear to be positioning REDD+ as a testing ground for seeing more generally how international funding mechanisms and sustainable development priorities can be integrated to address climate change.

Evolution

While the debate over numerous technical policy choices remained in the background and periodically resurfaced throughout the event, this dialogue presented a focused and sustained vision of why meaningful safeguards are not simply a burden to be side-stepped by eager project developers or forested countries looking to tap into the growing pool of money to fight deforestation. Similarly, the standards being discussed were not to be viewed as a luxury afforded only to conscientious funders.

What was laid plain through the course of the discussions and comments from both panelists and members of the audience over the course of the day was a growing consensus that critical safeguards such as securing free, prior, and informed consent (commonly abbreviated as FPIC) from local stakeholders, as well as the establishment of functioning grievance and redress mechanisms should, rather than obstacles, more fundamentally be viewed as enabling conditions without which REDD+ will be doomed to fail.

According to Lars Løvold, the Director of Rainforest Foundation Norway and panelist in the first session, the process of REDD+ policy formation has been changed dramatically since it first emerged clearly with the Bali Action Plan in 2007. The role of southern NGOs and indigenous peoples groups has increasingly been recognized and institutionally secured through voices and votes in various executive and policy bodies embedded within the emerging REDD+ architecture.

Løvold pointed specifically to the transformation of the Paris-Oslo process where many civil society and indigenous peoples organizations were initially left entirely out of the picture, but are now being incorporated into the nascent Partnership's apparatus. While Løvold stressed that more such progress was needed and higher standards were still in order, he was heartened by the fact that the basic landscape for REDD+ participation has evolved considerably in recent memory.

Engagement

Yet even while voices and votes for local stakeholders have begun to materialize in several international bodies, a disconnect persists between developments on the international stage and for those on the ground to whom REDD+ will mean the most.

Guy Patrice Dkamela of the Network for Environment and Sustainable Development described the state of affairs in Cameroon as an upside-down pyramid. While more than a dozen BINGOs (big international non-governmental organizations) are active in the country on REDD+ issues, fewer than five national NGOs and only one government ministry are seriously engaged.

Arguing "REDD is still an issue for technocrats and the elite," Dkamela lamented a "tragedy of coordination" among national officials and organizations to develop the political will for making progress on forest conservation in Cameroon.

These stalled policies play into a history where, as Dkamela says, "corruption and collusion between [major economic] interests is a resilient process in the forest sector." He sees these trends furthering an ongoing distrust between the state and the population who have witnessed decades of failed revenue-sharing and embezzlement from forest funds.

In the final panel, Cécile Ndjebet, Director of Cameroon Ecology spoke of the urgent need to move the REDD+ discussion to a local context where mayors and community representatives could begin a more grounded process to move up the REDD+ learning curve and determine how REDD+ can be sustainably implemented. She described a danger that failing to engage local decision-makers on REDD+ could reverse the empowering trend of decentralization of authority in much of Africa if central governments are left as the only engaged political parties.

Ndjebet also stressed in particular the need to empower women who risk being further marginalized in decision-making and resource-management in Cameroon if money for REDD+ activities contributes to a magnification of the male-dominance of the forest sector. Ndjebet's perspective provided a stark reminder that these environmental remedies being sought around the world do not take place in a social vacuum, but rather have a strong potential to exacerbate (or ameliorate) pervasive social inequalities.

Enforcement

And yet, while the entire day's discussion of safeguards proceeded with general agreement, the unresolved issue for many seemed to be the mechanisms by which any safeguards could be reasonably enforced from international to local levels.

Forest Trends' Director of Communities & Markets Program Beto Borges described the landmark legal work arising from the Surui tribe's forest planting and REDD+ projects in Brazil that demonstrated a constitutional right for the tribe to the carbon in their trees. And the World Bank's Charles Di Leva described how existing contract mechanisms could be expected to fill some of the gap for enforcing breaches in agreed-upon safeguards where carbon credits are being generated.

But outside this scope of the carbon market, which is obviously looming large in the background, but for the time being seems relegated to be dwarfed in the short-term by public financing and fund-based approaches, the emergence of numerous multilateral and bilateral agreements have created a hodge-podge of social and environmental safeguards where they exist at all.

Andreas Dahl-Jørgensen, advisor to the Norwegian government's International Climate and Forest Initiative described a vision of coordinated international REDD+ activities. "We should have one national strategy and all donors come under that, multilateral and bilateral, in the same country," he said.

But the international political will to require meaningful social and environmental safeguards as part-and-parcel of REDD+ funding remains to be seen. Carlos Mamani, the chairperson of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues described in the day's third panel the current state of affairs regarding the recognition of indigenous rights through the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), but remained unconvinced that mere recognition of international commitments (as occurred at recent UNFCCC meetings in Bonn) was enough.

Citing failures among countries that are already signatories to the International Labour Organisation's Convention 169 that enshrines indigenous control "over their own institutions, ways of life and economic development including the rights to control their own development priorities, and the right to manage and safeguard their own natural resources," Mamani articulated that safeguards subject to political vetoes, biased judicial systems, or even simply capable of being ignored will provide no meaningful improvement in indigenous livelihoods and rather allow persistent colonial tensions to drive a wedge between marginalized locals and political authorities.

Ultimately, the growing momentum surrounding the need for safeguards in emerging international REDD+ mechanisms is worthy of note, but the potential efficacy of these standards is still largely unknown.

All Politics are Local

Recognizing the open gaps in local and regional engagement on these issues, the Rights and Resources Initiative has scheduled three new dialogues with regional emphases to be held over the coming months in El Salvador, Ethiopia, and Nepal before reconvening an international dialogue in Mexico by September.

The outcomes of these dialogues will no doubt continue to illuminate the way forward for REDD+, and we should all hope that the words and sentiments expressed at these and other regional meetings will inform the international debates currently occurring largely above any level accessible to local stakeholders.

Although, as Carlos Mamani described, "the current situation among indigenous groups is a division between those who accept REDD (or its versions + and ++) and those who condemn it," the value of open dialogues such as those commenced earlier this summer in Cochabamba and soon to occur in San Salvador, Addis Ababa, and Kathmandu can hardly be overstated.

If REDD+ is to be more than a convoluted financial sleight-of-hand or simply a complex extraction of a new environmental asset from forests and the Global South, there is no way forward but through meaningful consultation, consent, and ownership over the performance and outcomes of these activities on the ground by the people who value these forests most.