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

Community guidelines for accessing forestry voluntary carbon markets
The VCS currently has about fifteen approved methodologies for
measuring GHG emission reductions from ‘Agriculture, Forestry and
Other Land Use’ (AFOLU) projects. Project developers can choose the
methodologies most appropriate to them, for different types of project
under the categories of ARR, REDD, IFM and more. 15 The system also
lets project developers propose and develop new methodologies if the
existing ones do not meet their needs.
The VCS system makes sure that all projects meet a high standard of
quality; all project plans must be validated by an independent third
party. An organization that has no stake in the success of the project
checks that the plans make sense – and confirms that the project should
achieve its objectives.
When the time comes for a VCS project to claim its carbon credits, the
project manager’s own calculations of actual emission reductions must
also be verified by an independent third party. This organization (again,
with no stake in the success of the project) checks that the project
manager has done the calculations correctly and confirms how many
carbon credits it can claim.
These independent third parties are known as validation/verification
bodies (VVBs). They must be approved by the VCS and be properly
qualified to carry out these tasks.
When GHG emission reductions have been verified, the project manager
can request the VCS to issue carbon credits. In the VCS system, carbon
credits are known as verified carbon units (VCUs), and whenever they
are traded as carbon offsets on the VCM they are tracked through a
registry system.
VCUs can be linked with other standards such as the Climate, Community
and Biodiversity (CCB) Standard. Investors in the VCM like this, because
it gives them extra assurance that the carbon credits have delivered
15 http://www.v-c-s.org/methodologies/find-a-methodology?title=&tid=14
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