Mexico Forest Protocol Version 1.0

Summary

The initial release of the draft Climate Action Reserve’s (Reserve) Mexico Forest Protocol (MFP) followed 14 months of meetings, consultations, and conference calls among an expansive list of Mexican and American stakeholders. The participants in the stakeholder process included non-governmental organizations (NGOs), government agencies, project developers, and landowner representatives. Following a public comment period in January, 2012, in which many important ideas were raised, the Reserve postponed further elaboration of the protocol while important activities were taking place in Mexico with regard to REDD+ initiatives and Mexico’s Climate Change Law. The current draft was developed with improved clarity as to which activities will be eligible in Mexico and with a vision toward seeking synergies with a standard being developed in Mexico (Norma Mexicana (NMX) para el desarrollo de proyectos forestales de carbono) that will create an important infrastructure for all forest project activities.

This protocol is focused on crediting of activities that sequester CO2 from the atmosphere. The protocol provides project eligibility rules, methods to calculate a project’s net removals of CO2 from the atmosphere due to sequestration activities, procedures to address and compensate for the release of CO2 back to the atmosphere (i.e. “reversals”), and approaches for long-term project monitoring and reporting. The goal of this protocol is to ensure that the net GHG removals caused by a project are accounted for in a complete, consistent, transparent, accurate, and conservative manner and may therefore be reported to the Climate Action Reserve (Reserve) as the basis for issuing carbon offset credits (called Mexican Climate Reserve Tonnes or MCRTs). The protocol is designed to interface and reconcile with future accounting strategies developed at jurisdiction levels, where the focus is expected to be on avoiding emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD). The intention is for this protocol to be complementary to jurisdictional efforts by focusing on forest carbon enhancements. 

The Reserve is an international offsets program working to ensure integrity, transparency, and financial value in the North American carbon market. It does this by establishing regulatory quality standards for the development, quantification and verification of GHG emissions reduction projects in North America; issuing carbon offset credits known as MCRTs generated from such projects; and tracking the transaction of credits over time in a transparent, publicly accessible system. Adherence to the Reserve’s high standards ensures that emission removals associated with projects are real, additional, and meet rigorous permanence standards, thereby instilling confidence in the environmental benefit, credibility, and efficiency of carbon markets.