Equitable Earth

This week at London Climate Action Week, our partners Peoples Forests Partnership, Wildlife Works and Chloris Geospatial are facilitating 2 timely and important conversations exploring community rights, carbon and biodiversity finance, and technology innovation in climate action: (1) Wildlife Works and Chloris Geospatial will be speaking at a roundtable discussion, “The role of tech innovation in scaling up private financing of natural climate solutions: closing the trust gap.” 🗓 Date: Wednesday, June 26 ⏰ Time: 1:00 PM - 3:30 PM 📍Location: 2 George Yard, London EC3V 9DH, UK Register here: https://lnkd.in/geX4Hyuf (2) The Ground Climate Action in Human Rights session is co-organized by Peoples Forests Partnership, Fauna & Flora and Natural Climate Solutions Alliance. 🗓 Date: June 26 ⏰ Time: 2:00 PM - 3:30 PM 📍Location: 80 Charlotte Street, London Join this pivotal discussion on strengthening community rights and achieving positive outcomes in climate action. Learn about the crucial role that carbon and biodiversity finance can and must play to get it right. Event Highlights: 🟢 Case Studies and Panelists from the UK, Liberia, Nepal, and Latin America. 🟢 In-depth discussions on integrating human rights into climate action. 🟢 Strategies to leverage carbon and biodiversity finance for better outcomes. Register here: https://lnkd.in/e-c4RVJb #climateaction #LCAM2024 #vcm

🌎 We are excited to announce a partnership with Chloris Geospatial as our exclusive provider of digital monitoring, reporting and verification (dMRV) of forest carbon data for our new forest carbon standard. Innovative technology like this is pivotal in our quest to help end deforestation and biodiversity loss. This partnership will allow projects verified with Equitable Earth to report more accurately than ever before. Chloris uses advanced scientific techniques to process new datasets from spaceborn instruments to measure above-ground biomass to capture carbon stock change with efficiency, transparency and high accuracy. “Partnering with Chloris marks a significant milestone for Equitable Earth as we pursue an innovative new approach to forest carbon standards,” said Beto Borges, Chair of the Equitable Earth Indigenous Peoples & Local Communities Advisory Group. “Our commitment is to serve the voluntary carbon market holistically, ensuring that our efforts not only meet scientific accuracy and independence but also benefit local communities. Chloris's dedication to independent, high-quality carbon mapping is crucial for achieving these goals.” Read more about this partnership at: https://lnkd.in/gHREveVp #climateaction #carbonmarket #vcm

Equitable Earth is building a transparent new forest carbon standard, methodology and platform. In this collaborative effort involving multiple stakeholders, we frequently encounter challenges in our decision making processes. These decisions often pit the interests of carbon market stakeholders in the Global North against the interests of local communities in the Global South – where the real work of stopping forest loss happens. Throughout the history of carbon markets, many decisions have been made to reduce risk for the Global North while increasing risk for local communities in the Global South. We believe that our decisions must first and foremost benefit Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IP&LCs) in the Global South. This approach ensures better and more durable conservation efforts while fortifying the trustworthiness and resilience of the voluntary carbon market. Our policy choices placing Indigenous Peoples and local communities at the center of Equitable Earth’s forest carbon standard also provide exactly what market stakeholders need: stability, trust and resilience. The crucial choices we are making in our design and policymaking include strong requirements for revenue sharing and full transparency of money flows. The specifics in these requirements include:   🌍 Every forest carbon project will be required to have a revenue sharing model that is co-developed, approved by, and transparently shared with the local community. 🌏 This revenue sharing with the local community will be subject to Equitable Earth standards of fairness and equity that are based on principles developed by Peoples Forests Partnership. 🌎 Equitable Earth will require projects to disclose their actual financial expenditures, ensuring that each project conforms to its revenue sharing agreements with the local community and other stakeholders. 🌴 Equitable Earth will evaluate each forest carbon project’s financial investments in relation to its conservation and community development goals. This will provide concrete evidence of project effectiveness for investors, buyers and stakeholders. 🌳 Equitable Earth is committed to ensuring that carbon market information – including pricing and transaction volumes – are always accessible to IP&LC partners for their projects. This makes it easier for local communities of the Global South to make their own decisions as to what’s fair for them. 🌲 We choose radical transparency of money flows for Indigenous Peoples and local communities who are the frontline protectors of the planet’s forests and biodiversity. 👁 Read more at our blog: https://lnkd.in/gb6vrEmf

Julia Butterfly Hill - forest activist and tree sitter - speaks out in favor of REDD+ and carbon credits to fund forest protection: "The good news is we have solutions, we just need to turn talking into action. Even in Luna more than 20 years ago, I was talking about the potential of carbon credits to fund forest protection if done right. "Today, projects like this (known as REDD+ projects) protect over 3 million hectares of forest and reduce emissions by more than 63 million tons a year. "Seems like a win. But instead of celebrating, or at the very least allowing these projects to continue, extreme people drag the world back to just talking and attack the REDD+ system for giving corporations a ‘license to pollute’. "Corporations already have that license to pollute from governments, otherwise they wouldn’t be doing it. If people just want to point fingers and say that there should be no polluters period and anything else is a sellout proposition, then those people should be in the halls of governments lobbying to end pollution. The sad truth is that for the foreseeable future, corporations are going to be polluting. So while that’s the case, let’s use the money to do something good – not only good but vital – for the future of our planet." Read the complete story by Julia Butterfly Hill: https://lnkd.in/e9TMHTfM

Forest Wisdom in Action: this latest newsletter from Equitable Earth includes details about an important feature of our new forest carbon standard: radical transparency of money flows. #equitableearth #carbonmarket #climatefinance #climateaction #transparency

Today is International Women's Day. Imagine a gender equal world. A world that's diverse, equitable, and inclusive. Together we can forge women's equality. In celebration of International Women's Day, we are proud to repost a story about how Equitable Earth supported the largest delegation of Brazilian Indigenous women to ever attend a UN Climate Change Conference: The commanding presence of 25 Indigenous women leaders marked this historic occasion sponsored by Equitable Earth at COP28 in Dubai. This latest version of the annual UN Climate Change Conference had the largest attendance of Indigenous delegates of any COP (over 300 Indigenous People from all over the globe). The group of women, backed by Equitable Earth, Forest Trends, and GreenData and predominantly made up of Brazilian Indigenous women, not only diversified global environmental dialogue but also assertively claimed a space for the voices of the communities often marginalized in climate and conservation discussions. For decades, the global climate narrative has been dominated by hegemonic nations of the Global North, frequently overlooking the rights and voices of Indigenous Peoples. At this COP28, however, perspectives from Indigenous territories emerged as fundamental – providing crucial insights for developing effective strategies to combat climate change. Read more: https://lnkd.in/gXvbzCrE #womenempowerment #leadership #equitable #internationalwomensday

We will be sharing more details soon about our new forest carbon standard, including radically transparent insights behind our methodologies and platform. For now, here are some words of wisdom from Everland - one of our founding member organizations: "It's important to note that data consistently shows REDD+ works. With this proven success we're ready to expand, using innovative methods like new baseline methodologies and the Equitable Earth Standard."

What core principles guide Equitable Earth’s work? 🌍 Equitable: we work with local forest communities to create prosperity and protect forests through fair and transparent access to climate finance. We require ownership for – and inclusion of – forest communities from the outset of our forest carbon projects; we also require ongoing inclusion of these forest communities. This leads to restored forests and healthier global ecosystems that are protected by local communities who have an economic stake in the matter. ✊🏼 Community led: Indigenous People and local communities are at the heart of our work. Stopping deforestation happens on the ground and is carried out by frontline communities, and our forest conservation projects must work, first and foremost, for the local forest community. 🔎 Transparent: we require transparent and strict rules of project management of our forest carbon projects: including the flow of climate finance monies, how revenue is shared, improved rules for Free, Prior and Informed Consent, and clear evidence of community leadership and decision making in our projects. ✨ High quality: the quality of our projects is not just about protecting forests and the climate. High quality also means that projects are carried out in an equitable and inclusive way for local forest communities by following our new forest carbon standard and methodology. 💡Robust carbon science and accounting: Equitable Earth uses leading-edge science combined with field-based and digital measurement, reporting and verification (MRV). We take responsibility for the quality of our world-class carbon science and how it is applied by projects under our standard. 🌳 Holistic forest conservation: our standard enables payment to local communities for stopping future deforestation (avoided deforestation), restoring degraded forest areas (carbon removal), and stewarding intact forest ecosystems. all three conservation activities within one standard acknowledges and incentivizes the conservation cycle. 🌞 Claims integrity: we meet global conservation goals, not an organization’s carbon neutral goals. Equitable Earth determines the claims that can be made by companies buying our forest carbon credits to make sure they are verifiably true. 👁 Our forest carbon credits are not for carbon offset claims, but to pay Indigenous People and local communities for the essential service of protecting forests and biodiversity around the world. 👉🏼 Read more about these core principles at: https://eq-earth.com/how/

How will Equitable Earth meet our goals of ending deforestation and biodiversity loss while driving climate finance directly to forest communities and the Global South? 🌍 🌲 We will certify and issue high-quality Forest Carbon Credits through the voluntary carbon market. We certify these community-led projects through a rigorous process that verifies equity, transparency and accountability every step of the way. Projects will be certified by Equitable Earth and by independent third-party auditors, and will be closely reviewed and approved by the forest communities themselves. 🤝 We will only certify projects that are community-led and protect the interests of forest communities. To do this, we will require adherence to strict rules of project management – from equitable and transparent revenue sharing, to best practices for Free, Prior and Informed Consent, to strong evidence of community leadership and decision-making, to the implementation of community rights protections, safeguards and grievance mechanisms. 🌱 We will measure project effectiveness holistically. We are developing carbon measurement and overall impact methodologies, in collaboration with leading scientists, standards and development experts. We will make all of our data and our methodology public and accessible from the outset. We also offer full transparency in the flow of money to local communities and transparency in project management. 💡 We will operate across all three rainforest regions in Latin America, Africa and Asia. We aim to help turn the areas of tropical rainforests most at risk of deforestation into successful conservation and community development projects led by Indigenous Peoples and local communities. #forestwisdom #rigorousscience #indigenousaction #equitableearth #climateaction #carboncredits #indigenouspeoples #climatefinance

Welcome to our first newsletter on LinkedIn! Featuring recent news and updates about our work and our community. #climateaction #equitableearth #indigenouspeoples #forestconservation #voluntarycarbonmarket #vcm #redd