ENVIRONMENT
FORESTRY
TRANSVERSAL
Services: Strategic analysis and foresight, Technical and economic advice, Monitoring, evaluation and capitalisation
Countries: Madagascar
Dates of intervention: 2018/12 - 2019/06
Amount executed: 34 710 €
Total amount of the service: 34 710 €
Main backer: Confidentiality agreement client
Main beneficiary: Confidentiality agreement
Support provider: SalvaTerra
Experts: David COMBAZ, Maden LE CROM
As part of its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and carbon offsetting policies, a French luxury group called on SalvaTerra to assess the "credibility" of the carbon credits proposed by the REDD+ project of the Makira protected area, led by the NGO Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) in the North-East of Madagascar. This project, primarily based on the protection of a forest area of more than 330,000 hectares, is accompanied by local development measures to limit deforestation due to the expansion of slash-and-burn agriculture in the surrounding communities. These measures include the ecological intensification of local rice systems, the development of cash and food chains, educational and health facilities, and the establishment of community regulations to regulate access to forest resources. This project has both VCS and CCBS certification, and plans to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 38 MteqCO2 between 2005 and 2034.
The study consisted of analysing and evaluating the project, both in terms of achieving the objectives of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and in terms of supporting the development of local communities. In detail, the experts (i) reviewed the project documentation, comparing it with the UNFCCC, IPCC and VCS and CCBS guidelines, and (ii) assessed in situ the involvement of local populations, leakage management measures and distribution of benefits. Among other elements, the study highlighted (i) the link between the evolution of the vanilla and clove markets and deforestation and forest degradation, (ii) the performance of cocoa and coffee-based agroforestry systems and the rice cultivation techniques disseminated, (iii) the acceptable level of implementation of social investments and (iv) the good level of ownership of the project by local populations.
Third-party assessment of the "credibility" of the Makira REDD+ project carbon credits: Review of the project documentation and comparison with the UNFCCC, IPCC and VCS and CCBS guidelines; Field visit to assess the involvement of local populations, leakage management measures and the quality of the benefit-sharing mechanism; Evaluation of the opportunity to purchase REDD+ credits, with a view to carbon offsetting of a French industrial group.