ECO Natural Forest Standard
The Natural Forest Standard aims to:
- Promote the conservation and restoration of natural forests for the benefit of the local communities and society in general.
- Quantify carbon and other ecosystem benefits using scientific and evidence-based methods.
- Encourage improved management through transparent reporting and evaluation of actions.
- Provide a Standard that is specific in its focus, for medium to large-scale natural forestry conservation and restoration projects.
The key features of the NFS are:
- Focus on protecting natural forests at risk from deforestation and degradation and by restoring natural forest which has already been degraded.
- Integrating the protection of forests and biodiversity while providing support and benefits to local communities.
- Transparent and efficient processing of projects.
- Uncomplicated process to minimise transaction costs and delays.
- Unique Normative Biodiversity Metric rating attributed to all NFS projects and issued credits, certifying the biodiversity benefits in to carbon.
- Providing a unified risk-based method for generating the baseline and BAU scenarios.
The NFS is designed to mobilise resources for the conservation and restoration of natural forests in ways that benefit local and indigenous communities as well as ensuring there is no net loss of biodiversity in the project areas.
The functionality of the Standard optimises the time requirements of bringing projects from initial implementation to credit issuance in the most responsive, efficient timescale possible, whilst also keeping the integrity and transparency that are essential criteria to the credibility of the Standard.
The ECO NFS is unique in its design as it has the project-developers needs in mind, whilst incorporating the integrity of stringent eligibility criteria with efficient third party validation and verification processes.
