Indigenous and Local Community Leaders Call for Strengthened Safeguards in ART’s Jurisdictional REDD+ Draft Standard

A total of 30 Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities representative organisations and leading rights-based organizations have submitted joint recommendations to the Architecture for REDD+ Transactions (ART) Secretariat and Board, asking for critical improvements to the TREES 3.0 draft jurisdictional carbon market standard. Their submission, made during ART’s public consultation period, calls for stronger protections of rights, more inclusive governance, and robust mechanisms to ensure social integrity in jurisdictional REDD+ programs.

States and jurisdictions increasingly view jurisdictional REDD+ as a key strategy to finance their efforts to reduce deforestation and meet their climate commitments, which will be renewed at COP30 in Belém. The message of the signatories is clear: jurisdictional REDD+ programs cannot succeed without the full and effective participation of the communities that steward the world’s tropical forests.

Progress and Remaining Gaps

The coalition acknowledges improvements in the TREES 3.0 draft, including the explicit recognition of underrepresented groups, such as Afrodescendant Peoples, women and youth, and clearer requirements for benefit-sharing plans. However, they emphasize that critical gaps remain, particularly around consultation processes, effective participation, and the role of Validation and Verification Bodies (VVB) in assessing safeguard compliance.

“The complexity and ambiguity in the standard risks inconsistent application,” warned Maryka Paquette, Senior Policy Manager with Rainforest Foundation US. “Without more explicit guidance and requirements, as well as increased transparency, even well-intentioned programs can fall short.”

“From the territorial level, we see and experience the potential that jurisdictional REDD+ programs have to improve the recognition of our rights while at the same time reducing deforestation.” stated Jamer López Agustín, President of the Organización Regional de AIDESEP-Ucayali (ORAU) of Peru. “For these reasons, we as ORAU actively participated in this review of the TREES standard: to ensure that the way these programs are designed and implemented respects and fulfills our rights and guarantees our full and effective participation from the start. Without that, carbon credits cannot be considered high integrity.”

Three Remaining Priorities for TREES 3.0

The submission builds on a letter sent to the ART Secretariat in December 2024 by 14 representative Indigenous Peoples as well as Local Community organizations, along with Rainforest Foundations Norway and US, many of whom were signatories on the current submission. The joint recommendations are grounded in on-the-ground experiences with carbon markets, as well as international best practices for Cancun Safeguards implementation.It outlines three core priorities that must be addressed in the final TREES 3.0 standard:

1. Ensuring Early, Inclusive, and Meaningful Consultation

Communities must be proactively engaged from the earliest stages of REDD+ program design. This includes culturally appropriate consultations and the recognition of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) for any programs affecting their lands, rights, or livelihoods.

2. Full Participation in Governance and Benefit Sharing

Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities must have decision-making power in program governance, benefit-sharing arrangements, and monitoring systems. The standard must require binding agreements and transparent reporting to ensure equity and accountability.

3. Stronger Safeguard Compliance and Oversight

ART must ensure that national legal frameworks align with international human rights standards. Validation and Verification Bodies (VVBs) should be required to rigorously assess safeguard conformance, including land tenure rights, FPIC, and grievance mechanisms.

“From our experience in the Upper Mazaruni, we know that without early and informed consultation, real decision-making power, and strong safeguards, programs like ART-TREES risk repeating the same challenges we’ve seen in Guyana’s ART program. We want these initiatives to succeed, but success will only come when Indigenous Peoples are genuine partners and their rights are protected in practice, not just on paper” says Alma Marshall, Chair of Upper Mazaruni District Council (UMDC).

A Call for a More Inclusive Collaboration in the Standard Development

The submission includes detailed technical recommendations, including proposed amendments to TREES 3.0 text, its templates, and the TREES Validation and Verification Standard, which provides guidelines to the VVBs. This set of recommendations aim to make the standard more transparent and rights-aligned.

The signatories also express their interest in a continued collaboration with ART and their desire to actively contribute to the development of safeguard guidance documents and the TREES Validation and Verification Standard. These documents would provide practical tools for jurisdictions and VVBs to meet and assess safeguard requirements and ensure meaningful engagement with rightsholders.

“If the validation and verification procedures of TREES are not substantially clarified, expanded and strengthened, any improvements to the main standard - including its safeguards section - are unlikely to translate into practice.” cites Oda Almås-Smith, Coordinator of the Responsible Finance Programme at Forest Peoples Programme, who contributed to the submission. “A clearer and more robust methodology must require VVBs to engage meaningfully with rightsholders and to identify gaps between national law and practice and international standards, such as in assessing whether Participant claims around collective land tenure rights and FPIC are legitimate.”

Setting a Global Benchmark

The signatories urge ART to seize this opportunity to set the global benchmark for high-integrity jurisdictional REDD+ programs.

“Robust safeguards are not optional—they are fundamental to successful climate action,” asserts Julia Naime, Senior International Forest Finance Adviser at Rainforest Foundation Norway. “By anchoring rights and equity at the core of TREES 3.0, ART can lead the way in delivering climate solutions that are just, inclusive, and effective.”

Sergio Guzmán, Climate Change and Forests Officer of the Asociación de Comunidades Forestales de Petén (ACOFOP) of Guatemala contends, “The collective experience of the signatories - especially of all the representative organizations of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities that contributed to this submission, each with their own concrete experience and engagements with carbon markets - needs to be taken into account to get TREES to become a gold standard.”

Joint recommendations to the ART Secretariat and Board on the TREES 3.0 draft.

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