Community guidelines for accessing forestry voluntary carbon ... - FAO

Community guidelines for accessing forestry voluntary carbon markets
document (PDD);
5. Validation of project design, leading to the registration of the
project;
6. Project implementation and monitoring;
7. Verification of carbon credits; and
8. Issuance and sale of carbon credits, as verified carbon units
(VCU).
The duration of the whole cycle is highly variable and depends to a
large degree on the complexity of the project and the availability of
human and financial resources. After registration of the project as an
approved project with a forestry VCM standard, if all goes well, the
first claim for carbon credits can be made within five years, and usually
sooner than this. Monitoring of the project’s impact on carbon stocks
and emission reductions is often done at least one year prior to the
external verification. Verifications and carbon claims may be made as
often as once a year, but more often they are less frequent than this; the
income generated by the sale of VCUs must be worth the expenditure
of conducting a pre-verification monitoring exercise and going through
a full verification audit.
At the beginning of the project cycle, the project developer’s main focus
should be the development of initial documents that will enable them
to access the market and attract investors. These documents include
the Project Idea Note (PIN), a methodology, a project description
(PD) or project design document (PDD) – and maybe an emission
reduction purchase agreement (ERPA). Selection of an existing project
methodology, or the development of a new one, is crucial to meeting
project objectives in the most efficient and cost-effective way. Then
it must be ensured that the method is applied correctly. Each of these
steps is described below.
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