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

Community guidelines for accessing forestry voluntary carbon markets
Box 7: Carbon rights
Carbon rights have become a key cause of concern for many of the
civil society organizations that follow the development of forest
carbon projects.
Very few countries have attempted to define what is meant by a ‘right
to carbon’, nor what benefits such rights give to the right-holder. In
Australia and New Zealand, it is understood as a new form of property
right. The carbon in forests is therefore seen as a commodity that can
be traded separately from the forest itself.
This only really makes sense where a forest is clearly and legally owned
by a single party, who can divide up the property in whatever manner
they like. But in most of the Asia-Pacific region, where forest use rights,
if not forest tenure, are traditionally held in common, treating carbon
as a separate property is at best confusing and at worst a source of
misunderstanding and conflict.
If carbon rights cannot be considered separately from the forest as a
whole, project developers for the VCM should instead turn directly
to forest use rights and ownership. ‘Carbon rights’ derive directly
from existing traditional and legal forest use rights. VCM projects
must resolve any outstanding disputes over these use rights before
proceeding with the project.
The holder of a ‘carbon right’ has the right to benefit financially from
the trade in environmental services, where the service is climate
change mitigation, and the unit of trade is a carbon credit.
For more information, see REDD-net Asia-Pacific Bulletin 3: Carbon Rights and
REDD+ available from http://redd-net.org/resource-library/
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