Christiana Figueres: Up Close And Personal On Carbon Markets

UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres sees a key role for markets in verifying that the emissions reductions promised by countries in upcoming climate plans are actually achieved. The new bottom-up approach to the climate negotiations means that the era of carbon market experimentation underway in California, China, South Africa, and other places is likely to continue.

Indigenous People Call For Scaled Up REDD As Study Highlights Precarious State Of Territorial Forests

Most indigenous people have resisted the temptation to chop their forests for gain leaving them short of development largesse, but also in the lurch when it comes to financing programs aimed at saving forests that are clearly in danger. Now a new peer-reviewed paper says more than half the land under indigenous protection is, in fact, endangered and indigenous leaders say REDD finance can help them avert disaster.

This Week In V-Carbon: Your Guide To COP 20

The 20th meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is underway in Lima, Peru and Ecosystem Marketplace is on hand to cover it. This year, the process has been turned on its head as countries transitioned from trying to negotiate a top-down agreement to building a bottom-up framework based on “Intended Nationally Determined Contributions,” or INDCs.

2014: The Year In Biodiversity

Voluntary initiatives and integration were big topics of the biodiversity space in 2014. In the US, regulators and landowners grappled with new methods to protect dwindling species population in the face of encroaching development. Meanwhile, the international world continued to push for meaningful biodiversity conservation through a merging of agendas.

2014: The Year For Nature-Based Solutions?

29 December 2014 | In 2014, concepts like water stewardship and the water-energy-food nexus gained momentum. Combining that growth with the ramifications of weather extremes like the Rim Fire and the California drought that also happened in 2014 makes the year an eventful one for the water sector to say the least. Studies, initiatives and events aimed at improving global water health marked the past […]

2014: The Year in Forest Carbon

How to measure a year? You’ll have to wait for our data collection to conclude in the New Year to find out how many tonnes of forest-based emissions reductions were financed in 2014, but for now we’ll take stock of the year’s major developments, which ranged from the triumphant to the tragic.

This Week In Forest Carbon: Lima Call For Action Undergoes Surgery

The Lima Call for Action set a procedure for countries to submit their contributions to fighting climate change, but the guidance on how to include land-use is thin so far. In other news, private investors have committed $365 million to restore 20 million hectares in Latin America and the Caribbean, a REDD+ pilot in Tanzania is stalling as it waits on a second phase of investment and an airplane laser-beamed an Alaskan forest to measure its carbon.

INDCs, REDD+, And The Alphabet Soup Of COP 20

Year-end climate talks begin today in Lima, and last year’s map won’t help you understand them. That’s because the aim is no longer to create a one-size-fits-all global agreement, but to come up with a set of ground rules that lets countries attack the problem in their own way, within reason. It’s a path full of pitfalls and promise, and here’s how to navigate it.