What is the Plan Vivo Standard?

To ensure that the projects registered under Plan Vivo are of the highest quality for environmental integrity, socio-economic benefits and social safeguarding, they are assessed against the Plan Vivo Standard. This is a list of requirements that projects must meet in order to become Plan Vivo-certified and to generate Plan Vivo Certificates (if desired). The Plan Vivo Standard has been created with over 20 years of experience from Plan Vivo projects and input from world-leading experts from areas including Natural Climate Solutions, carbon accounting, social safeguarding, community-engagement practices and project development. The Standard is forever evolving; periodically updated (approximately every 5 years) to reflect current best practice and recent experiences.

For the latest version of the Standard, see Plan Vivo's Documentation.

 

Plan Vivo governance structure

The Plan Vivo Foundation is the organisation that governs the Plan Vivo system and assesses projects against the Plan Vivo Standard. The Foundation is comprised of several groups working in unison, as outlined below. To view the composition of these groups, please see the Our Team page.

Governance group	Function
Board of Trustees	Takes overall responsibility for the management of the organisation.
Secretariat	Runs the day to day activities at the Foundation, including managing the project registration/certification process, providing projects with Plan Vivo Certificates, and managing organisational partnerships.
Technical Advisory Committee	An expert panel that provides advice to the Secretariat and Board of Trustees on technical matters such as around climate benefit estimation, social safeguarding, forestry interventions, project development etc.
Steering Group	Makes decisions on the strategic direction that Plan Vivo should follow. Membership is comprised of a representation of Plan Vivo stakeholders, which rotates periodically.
Technical Advisory Group	An expert group, external to Plan Vivo, that provides peer-review services for project documentation (i.e. technical specifications) and advice to the Secretariat and Technical Advisory Committee if necessary.