FORMA and fCPR: Accelerating a Performance-Based Payment System for REDD+

Reducing carbon emissions from forest clearing and degradation has become an important part of the international climate agenda. To this end, a proposed payment mechanism called REDD+ would transfer funding to tropical forest countries to take action: to reduce emissions from deforestation and land degradation (REDD) and to engage in sustainable forest management and conservation and to enhance forest carbon stocks (the + part).

But forests are more complex than power plants, so it’s been more difficult to design a performance finance scheme based on quantified reductions in emissions. One of the biggest challenges is to design a simple, reliable system to monitor, report, and verify changes in carbon stocks calibrated in terms of CO2 equivalent.

The Center for Global Development has developed a satellite monitoring tool, called Forest Monitoring for Action, or FORMA, and a simple performance rating system, called Forest Conservation Performance Rating (fCPR), that could potentially be used to provide a performance scorecard and an interim performance-based payments scheme until robust national monitoring, reporting, and verification schemes with “full carbon accounting” are in place. This paper briefly summarizes how the FORMA tool and the fCPR rating system could work.