Frequently Asked Questions

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What are Plan Vivo Certificates?

Plan Vivo certificates represent units of long-term carbon benefit from sustainable,community based forest management and agroforestry plus associated, quantified, environmental and social benefits. See benefits of Plan Vivo projects for more information.

How are they quantified?

Plan Vivo certificates are quantified on the basis of expected average increase of carbon stocks in sustainable forest, agroforestry and other land use systems over a 100 year period. See technical specifications for more details on carbon quantification.

Why base certificates on future, rather than historic, carbon benefits?

The Plan Vivo scheme works on the basis of future carbon benefits for the following reasons:

• Farmers and communities in developing countries need a source of up-front investment in order to establish sustainable forest and other land use management. They cannot afford to establish these systems in the hope that they will be able to sell the carbon benefits at some time in the future.
• Buyers of certificates wish to see how their funds are applied to establish areas of sustainable forest and land management. If these funds were only made available after the carbon had been taken up, it would be difficult to demonstrate additionality (the difference made by the carbon funding).
• Terrestrial ecosystems take up and release CO2 at different stages of growth. For example, trees take up CO2 as they grow but some of the carbon stored in biomass is lost when trees are thinned or felled. The crediting of historic carbon uptake would create considerable complexity because credits relating to uptake in one period would need to be cancelled when thinning or felling occurred.

Do Plan Vivo Certificates guarantee the carbon benefit?

No. The Plan Vivo scheme is not able to guarantee that the long term carbon benefits will be realised. However, the scheme is designed to provide a reasonable level of assurance through the application of appropriate practices and risk management.

How is the risk of non realisation of the carbon benefit managed?

The Plan Vivo system incorporates many features designed to manage risks and maximise the potential for long-term sustainable land use management and its associated socio-economic benefits; these include:

• entry requirements for projects into the scheme and for communities and groups into each project (see FAQ on project requirements)
• participatory planning process to select areas and methods of management that will be sustainable and economically viable in the long term
• transparent, voluntary agreements with between
• training of local technicians to spot and address problems before they become serious
• technical advice to farmers and communities on agroforestry, forest management and soil management
• development of associated businesses / micro-enterprises such as bee keeping, carpentry and construction of efficient stoves
• staged payments to farmers, conditional on meeting agreed milestones towards the establishment of forestry and land use systems
• establishment of multiple sites across the landscape
• use of appropriate fire control measures
• strong emphasis on the use of native species, adapted to local conditions
• maintenance of a risk buffer, a reserve stock of carbon benefits that remains unsold to cover unforeseen losses or under-performance.

The Plan Vivo scheme is in the process of merging the risk buffers across all Plan Vivo projects to provide a more effective group risk management approach.

How do you determine what is a reasonable level of assurance?

The Plan Vivo scheme operates in a transparent way to encourage constructive discussion between the community based organisations that operate Plan Vivo projects in developing countries, the buyers of certificates, researchers and policy developers.

There are a number of ways in which the level of assurance within the scheme can be varied. For example, we could reduce the overall level of risk within the system by:

• making entry conditions for farmers stricter (however, this would tend to push projects to avoid working with poorer farmers on more marginal land)
• making the estimates of carbon benefit for each land use system more conservative (however, this would either reduce the income available to farmers to establish sustainable management or increase the price of certificates)
• increase the level of risk reserve (this would also either reduce the income available to farmers to establish sustainable management or increase the price of certificates)
• stage the payments to farmers later (this would reduce the income available in the early stages of development, which corresponds to the highest level of cost, and would disadvantage poorer farmers).

Over time, we are therefore seeking to balance the risks of non-delivery of carbon storage with the requirements of a system that can deliver real benefits to a wide range of communities in developing countries who are struggling to achieve more sustainable land management.

The Plan Vivo scheme encourages research based around practical action to improve land use and is committed to learning from experience.

What have you learned about risks over the past 10 years?

The Plan Vivo system has ten years of operational experience in southern Mexico. Over this time the rate of failure and drop-out has been reduced from around 15% to around 5%, through the improvement of local operations including:

• Improved selection and preparation of communities (avoiding areas where group-conflicts undermine decision making and ensuring that new participants are better prepared and informed)
• Improved training for community technicians in the preparation of plans (ensuring that plans are not over-ambitious and are appropriate to local conditions)
• More group based agreements that encourage a group as a whole to ensure that all members keep up to date (local farmer groups can be self-regulating to a large extent)
• Increased farmer confidence in the scheme (in early years farmers had limited confidence that the scheme would provide carbon payments when milestones had been reached).

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