POLICY PAPER

FORMA and fCPR: Accelerating a Performance-Based Payment System for REDD+

June 20, 2012

Reducing carbon emissions from forestclearing and degradation has become animportant part of the international climateagenda. To this end, a proposed paymentmechanism called REDD+ would transferfunding to tropical forest countries totake action: to reduce emissions fromdeforestation and land degradation(REDD) and to engage in sustainable forestmanagement and conservation and toenhance forest carbon stocks (the + part).

But forests are more complex than powerplants, so it’s been more difficult to designa performance finance scheme based onquantified reductions in emissions. One ofthe biggest challenges is to design a simple,reliable system to monitor, report, and verifychanges in carbon stocks calibrated in termsof CO2 equivalent.

The Center for Global Development hasdeveloped a satellite monitoring tool, calledForest Monitoring for Action, or FORMA,and a simple performance rating system,called Forest Conservation PerformanceRating (fCPR), that could potentially beused to provide a performance scorecardand an interim performance-based paymentsscheme until robust national monitoring,reporting, and verification schemes with“full carbon accounting” are in place. Thispaper briefly summarizes how the FORMAtool and the fCPR rating system could work.

CITATION

de Nevers, Michele. 2012. FORMA and fCPR: Accelerating a Performance-Based Payment System for REDD+. Center for Global Development.

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