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Protecting Forests.
Unlocking Wealth.
Supporting Sustainable Development.
Forest Governments and LEAF
LEAF enables forest governments to sell forest high integrity carbon credits to public and private sector buyers, generating real value and wealth from their standing forests. The results-based payments for these credits provide a viable economic alternative to clearing forests for uses such as agriculture. The LEAF approach is designed to provide Forest Governments with access to long-term, predictable finance for sustainable development, helping improve people’s lives and livelihoods today and tomorrow.
What makes LEAF different?
26 Forest Governments have submitted eligible proposals
Twenty-six Forest Governments (national and subnational) have submitted eligible proposals to supply forest carbon credits to the LEAF Coalition. Each of these have passed a stringent technical assessment demonstrating their readiness to generate high integrity credits capable of meeting ART’s TREES Standard.
To date, ten governments have signed a Letter of Intent with Emergent and Costa Rica and Ghana have now finalized Emissions Reductions Purchase Agreements (ERPAs):
Countries with ERPAs
Countries with signed Letters of Intent (LOIs)
Brazilian States with LOIs
Ensuring the Rights and Participation of IP&LCs
Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IP&LCs) are critical stewards of tropical and subtropical forests. Their valuable insight, support, and participation is essential to the success of forest preservation and the LEAF initiative.
LEAF chose only to buy ART TREES credits in part, due to the rigorous social safeguards, which require forest governments to comply with the Cancún safeguards adopted by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
TREES requires that governments engage directly with IP&LCs and their representative groups, ensuring their full participation in broad consultations to build benefit sharing mechanisms. Neither the LEAF Coalition or Emergent is involved in the consultations with stakeholders, including IP&LCs, or defining benefit sharing frameworks, which governments must undertake to comply with ART’s TREES Standard.
LEAF is continuously working to strengthen strategies and forums to ensure that IP&LC groups understand and engage in LEAF processes, and that their feedback helps drive further improvements.
Roselyn Fosuah Adjei
Ghana Forestry Commission
We joined the LEAF coalition [because] we need to speak the private sector’s language, private sector is not just for offsetting […] There is an opportunity for investment here”
Andrea Meza Murillo
Former Minister of Energy and Environment for the Government of Costa Rica
We need to continue mobilising resources to protect the forests and we really think this coalition has a big potential to mobilise public and private resources.
What Forest Governments are saying about LEAF
LEAF Buyers' Criteria
LEAF’s stringent buyers’ criteria ensure that all action is additional to deep value chain emissions cuts. To participate in The LEAF Coalition private sector buyers must:
Publicly commit to science-based targets (SBTi), or equivalent quantified and independently verified decarbonization targets, consistent with limiting warming in line with the long-term temperature goal of the Paris Agreement.
Publicly commit to mid-century net zero targets covering all three scopes.
Join the United Nations Race to Zero
Publicly report a greenhouse gas emissions inventory following the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHGP).
Separately publicly report any use of ERs or other carbon credits, including purpose of use. Reporting should be independently audited.
Get in Touch
To find out more about how your government can participate in the LEAF Coalition, please fill in the form to contact:
Rocio Sanz Cortes
Executive Vice President, Global Origination
Emergent
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