Community guidelines for accessing forestry voluntary carbon markets

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific
Bangkok 2012

The climate change debate has brought forests to the forefront of the international agenda. Forests have acquired a new value as one of the planet’s most important stores of carbon, thus helping to ensure that levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, the most abundant greenhouse gas, are kept below critical levels. With all newly-appreciated values, new markets are not far behind. Carbon markets allow forest owners to gain recognition, and financial compensation, for the work they do to keep the forests in place, and to manage them sustainably. Since the 1990s the forestry voluntary carbon market (VCM) has taken shape, though forest owners have generally not been the first to understand its potential. It is a complex concept and there is a very real risk that forest owners may surrender the potential benefits of this new market to other, better informed actors. Small landowners and local communities in rural areas of the Asia-Pacific region are at the greatest risk of losing out in this new market. These guidelines were developed to assist smallholders and smallholder groups, community-based forest managers, non-governmental organizations and local forestry officials to decide whether or not to undertake a forestry voluntary carbon market project and, once a decision has been taken to proceed, to provide guidance on how to design and implement the project.