What is the Plan Vivo Standard?

The Plan Vivo Standard is a set of requirements used to certify smallholder and community projects based on their climate, livelihoods and environmental benefits. It is the longest-standing carbon Standard in the Voluntary Carbon Market and has gone through a 25+ year evolution, looking back on extensive and rich experience of working with smallholder and community-led restoration and forest protection projects.

The Standard had its origins in 1994 in a project in Chiapas Mexico which sought to incentivise and compensate smallholder reforestation. Over the last 26 years, the Standard has developed into a tried-and-tested model that has been applied by 28 projects in over 20 countries. We are proud that our Standard is attracting more and more projects as a pragmatic solution to deliver climate and livelihood benefits based on participatory approaches which put communities and smallholders at the centre of solutions.

 

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.

   

 

When was the Standard last updated?

In order to incorporate experience and lessons learned and ensure marketability of Plan Vivo-certified projects, the Plan Vivo Standard is periodically updated. The Plan Vivo Standard V4.0 was released in 2013 in response to increasing demand of REDD projects and to add more requirements. These requirements enabled new and innovative projects such as blue carbon, grasslands management and soil carbon projects to register under the Plan Vivo Standard.

The most recently updated Standard (V5.0, released July 2022) serves a double-pronged approach. On the one hand, both the Plan Vivo network of projects and the Plan Vivo Foundation are expanding. While we value innovation, flexible and bespoke models, there was a need to streamline our approach in order to scale Plan Vivo’s model. On the other hand, the Standard V5.0 aims to respond to emerging best practice on the Voluntary Carbon Market, which is increasingly influenced by the 2015 signing of the Paris Agreement and a global drive to keep temperatures from rising above 2 degrees Celsius.

 

 Standard V5.0 Documents   Standard V5.0 Webinar  Key procedural changes 

   

Plan Vivo Standard V4.0

You can access Plan Vivo's previous Standard (V4.0) - including the guidance manuals, other relevant documentation and templates - via below link below:

 

Standard V4.0 Documents

  

Queries or questions? 

Should you have any queries or questions, please do not hesitate to get in contact: 

• For project related enquiries, please email [email protected]
• For biodiversity related enquiries, please email [email protected]
• For Acorn related enquiries, please email [email protected]
• For anything else, please email [email protected]