carbon markets Archives - Resilient Landscapes (RL)

The blue carbon mangrove value chain framework

Key messages

The blue carbon mangrove value chain (BCMVC) connects global commitments to local impacts. It links climate and biodiversity targets with on-the-ground mangrove management, aligning policy, finance and socioeconomic community outcomes across scales.
The BCMVC is not only about carbon credit or its monetization. It must integrate ecological integrity and social values alongside economic returns to support legitimacy, equity and long-term sustainability.
Implementation and scaling depend on enabling conditions, investment-ready systems and actor-specific capacities. Government institutions require stronger planning and coordination capacities; project developers need measurement, reporting and verification, and financing skills; and local communities require capacities to participate as rights holders, as co-investors (socially and economically) and as negotiators in decision making, monitoring and benefit-sharing processes.

Challenges and opportunities in blue carbon mangrove value chain financing in Indonesia

Key messages

Public finance remains the backbone of mangrove investment in Indonesia, channelling resources through national budgets, subnational implementation systems and international partnerships.
Market-based mechanisms, especially voluntary carbon approaches, have gained the most attention in blue carbon mangrove value chain (BCMVC) financing based on integrating monitoring systems with national carbon registries, with civil society organizations taking a leading role in grounding, developing and testing diverse business models.
Indonesia has established a strong regulatory and institutional framework for blue carbon finance and investment, but scaling will depend on transaction readiness. Priority actions include clarifying carbon rights and authorization, strengthening benefit sharing arrangements, improving the affordability and credibility of measurement, reporting and verification (MRV), and operationalizing trust funds, PPPs and revenue-linked systems so projects can move from design to deals.
A well-designed blue carbon mangrove value chain can generate triple dividends through climate mitigation and adaptation, coastal resilience and biodiversity gains, and improved livelihoods and social equity, especially when local communities are engaged as co-designers, co-managers and beneficiaries.
Governance and capacity are the main enablers of equitable scaling. Capacity development should focus on what makes projects investable and inclusive, particularly MRV, project structuring, benefit sharing and community negotiation skills, so government, communities and market actors can reduce transaction costs and deliver credible, bankable mangrove projects.

Financial mechanisms to support Vietnamese enterprises in investing and implementing forest carbon projects: From policy to practice

In this working paper, the authors review and analyse financial policies and mechanisms that aim to help enterprises invest and implement forest carbon projects. These include: (i) state budget expenditure policies; (ii) tax incentives; (iii) business support in investing and accessing domestic and foreign credits/grants/loans; and (iv) participation in the carbon market. The authors discuss the challenges of policy implementation and propose solutions.

Rooting impactful forest carbon benefit sharing in local definitions and understandings: Lessons learned from Vietnam

Forest carbon markets are increasingly promoted as a potential solution to reduce emissions and help countries meet their commitments under the Paris Agreement. However, concerns persist among key stakeholders – particularly Indigenous Peoples and local communities – about the extent to which they will benefit from these initiatives. Central to the debate is the question of benefit sharing: who should benefit and how should those benefits be distributed? In countries like Vietnam, this remains a pressing issue for policymakers, practitioners and local communities alike.

Various governments and carbon standard-setting bodies have developed guidelines of an ‘effective’ benefit-sharing mechanism. However, these frameworks are often top-down, heavily influenced by Western norms and disconnected from the lived realities and perceptions of local stakeholders. Using Vietnam as a case study, this paper explores how local actors conceptualize and define impactful benefit-sharing mechanisms. Our findings highlight a significant disconnect between international frameworks and local communities’ daily experiences and values. The paper argues for a re-grounding of benefit-sharing concepts that are responsive to multi-scalar perspectives and rooted in local understandings of fairness and impact. Only through such an approach can benefit-sharing mechanisms be considered truly just and effective.

Towards an effective, practical and equitable forest carbon legal framework in Vietnam: Recommendations and proposals for the Draft Decree on Forest Carbon Sequestration and Storage Services, based on a synthesis of global and Vietnamese experiences and practices

This report analyses the provisions proposed in the Draft Decree on Forest Carbon Sequestration and Storage Services (‘the Draft Decree’) and provides relevant information as well as scientific evidence in both the global and Vietnamese contexts. The aim is to help policymakers make informed adjustments that align with Vietnam’s specific circumstances while positioning the country to proactively respond to emerging trends in the future carbon market.

Not all forest carbon credits are created equal: High integrity programmes and conditions for success

Concerns about the environmental and social impacts of carbon markets have sparked an effort towards higher integrity. However, greater clarity is needed regarding the different definitions and benchmarks of high integrity carbon (HIC), where these come from, and how they are interpreted and why, to understand their potential.

This Occasional Paper reviews the grey and scholarly literature to understand the main trends in HIC definitions, benchmarks, and use. The review finds more uniformity in perspectives on environmental integrity than in social integrity; there are differences in emphasis regarding HIC programme governance and on how to monitor integrity. Furthermore, despite the varied understandings of social integrity, with regard to the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IPs and LCs), the bottom line across reviewed documents remains tied to a “do no harm” standard; this should be considered as a minimum requirement that does not rise to the high ambition expected for high integrity.

Based on our review, we define HIC credits as emissions reduction or removal units supplied by programmes that bring together high quality and high ambition, in both ecological and social dimensions. Concerning high social integrity, we are particularly influenced and inspired by the perspectives and demands from IPs and LCs themselves. Social integrity needs to be taken as seriously as environmental integrity, conceptualized, and practised as going beyond safeguards that ‘do no harm’, and with greater attention to the financial investment and specific guidelines, methods, tools, and capacities required to make it achievable.

What is high integrity carbon? Forest carbon programmes and conditions for success

Key messages

With growing interest in ‘high integrity’ carbon, different definitions have been put forward, but few give social integrity as much attention as environmental integrity.
Similar commitments should be made towards social integrity, including financial investments; specific guidelines, methods, tools, and capacities required to make it achievable; and monitoring and evaluation systems.
Carbon programmes committed to high integrity must consider five key aspects relevant to the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IPs and LCs) – free, prior, and informed consent, gender equality, land and resource rights, benefit sharing, and grievance mechanisms and safeguard compliance.
Fundamentally, a shift is needed from ‘safeguarding’ to supporting IPs and LCs interested in participating in carbon actions, enabling their communities and organizations to be protagonists of their own self-determined well-being agendas.
Although favoured by high integrity approaches, jurisdictional programmes are burdened by the historical relationships between governments and IPs and LCs: failing to place equal importance on social and environmental integrity may reify power imbalances and inequalities.
The implementation of these recommendations will be challenged by governments treating jurisdictional programmes as if they were projects; programmes need to be fully integrated into jurisdictional governance.

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