 Welcome everyone to this webinar. Thanks for being here. As Maria Isabel mentioned, my name is Rosa Maria Román. I am working for the Center of International Forestry Research, CIFOR, and I am doing research within the SWAM project in Latin America and in Caribbean. I would like to first acknowledge and thank our donors. We are going to frame this webinar, which is focusing on discussing technical issues around self-standing blue-carbon emission reporting and mitigation targets under the Paris Agreement and VERA. I would like to start thanking our donors, the USAID, which is the main donor for the SWAM program, which as you see in this slide is the Sustainable Wetland Adaptation and Mitigation Program. This program is worldwide. We are doing research worldwide and has CIFOR and US Forest Service, mainly around 20 people working within it, on wetland ecosystems from adaptation to mitigation to ecosystem services to policy support. As you can see, the SWAM program has been running for the last 10 years and it started in 2008, working in Asia mainly, in the Sunderbrands, in Bangladesh, but also in Indonesia with all the issues around pitlands. And then it's been moving towards other continents. We are also working now in eastern Africa, western Africa, and in my case I'm working in Central America, the Caribbean, on the role of mangroves in sheltering the coastlines against hurricanes. So the role of mangroves as green infrastructure for risk reduction policies and their resilience to extreme events. So our gratitude to the USAID for this SWAM program. Here you can see places that around 25, 30 researchers are working within this initiative. The goal is to run research that promotes science that then it is useful for policy development. And on the first slide you could see the website of the SWAM program. We encourage you to take a look because there are a lot of publications. There is on the library, as you can see here, there is a copy of all the publications that have been submitted to peer review journals. And also to all the type of outreach documents within the SWAM project. So we encourage you to take a look to that. Also, there is a part of the SWAM initiative is geoposition data sets and maps of wetlands around the tropics, both pitlands and mangroves. And other type of digital information. So you're most welcome to take a look and to use whatever could be supportive for your own interests. So also, I'd like to say thank you to the director of ITE, Instituto de Ciencias de la Naturaleza, Territorio y Energías Renovables de la Universidad Pontificia Catolica del Perú, Dr. Eric Cosio, for having helped CIFO co-organize this SWAM initiative on self-standing blue carbon reporting emissions and mitigation targets and the Paris Agreement and BRRA. Thanks, I will gratitude to all those technical support that has been helping us to run this webinar. And I'd like to frame a bit this webinar and inform you that this is going to be a two-day or a two-session webinar. Today is the first session and we're going to have originally three sessions. It's going probably to be reduced to two because one of our speakers is having unfortunately some COVID problems in Mexico and will not be able to join us. So today we will have the UNF CCCC, the head of the Lucia sector, Peter Iversen, and then we will also have the lead program officer on blue carbon on the voluntary carbon market BRRA to tell us and navigate us a bit on potential options for organizing, developing, planning and implementing blue carbon self-standing programs. And the origin of this webinar was this workshop, this regional workshop with 11 governments in Central America and South America on the topic of blue carbons and how to incorporate the mitigation of blue carbon within NDCs. And I'd like to give a bit of context so that you understand better why some parts of this webinar are focused the way that they are focused. So basically the webinar, the workshop last year, derived from a very interesting research that was run by the team of Martin et al on how countries have been incorporating blue carbon in their NDCs. And one of the things that is rather clear is that most countries in Latin America, but also in other continents are working on blue carbons and incorporating them in NDCs, mainly for adaptation purposes. And we saw in the case of Latin America and the Caribbean that from the 20 countries that have reported blue carbon specifically their NDCs, all of them had incorporated topics of adaptation. The role of mangroves as coastal support against sea level rights, storm surges, extreme events, it's very clearly acknowledged in these NDCs, but their role as mitigation is not so much incorporated. As you can see from 20 countries, only seven incorporated the potential role of blue carbon within mitigation. And we started running this workshop last year also to understand what were the barriers and the opportunities to make a contribution of mangroves in particular towards mitigation within the NDCs. And we will be showing the next slides, which were some of these barriers that we will try to focus in this, in this webinar. Also, for us, for CIFORM for this one project program, sorry, it is important to work on this topic because it is a timing opportunity right now with the resubmission of the NDCs in 2020 to support countries to incorporate their mitigation targets within their NDCs for blue carbon. Also looking in the future to the NDCs global stock taking, how they can, if they are not able to incorporate it now in the resubmission, then what could be the next steps when they have better data and they are ready to incorporate them in 2023. Also, we are leveraging on the Initiativa Vente Vente, which is part of the Bond Challenge and we are in the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration, so it is a good time also to incorporate restoration action on blue carbon ecosystems, particularly mangrove as part of also this mitigation target within the NDCs. So, from the workshop last year, it was rather clear that some of the current barriers that countries have and the governments have when thinking of creating blue carbon programs have to do with some of the technicalities of the reporting under the UNFCCC. And also both in their greenhouse gas national inventories in their Alphaloo or Lulus CF sectors, but also within the red plus mechanism. And I'm going to highlight a few questions that have been posed by the governments in the country that we're going to answer, try to answer today in this webinar so that we can support this process. So, basically, one of the main topics that countries are struggling with is their mangroves are already part of the red plus targets, and they are part of their frails, or their FLRs, so if they are net emissions, and then creating blue carbon initiatives. When they've already been included into the red plus frails, it's confusing. There is not a very clear way of extracting the mangroves out of those commitments and then creating the self-standing initiatives. It's also not clear whether they have to extract them out and create self-standing initiatives. So this is something that our colleagues from the UNFCCC will be discussing today. So the first topic is this complication of red plus. Also another complication that we ran into last year in the workshop was which type of IPCCC guideline these countries that want to report on blue carbon and particularly on mangroves should be following for their greenhouse gas inventories of mangroves emissions. So there was this discussion, should we work with the IPCCC guidelines after 2016, as it is recommended for red plus, or in the case of mangroves, they should be into the wetlands supplement, therefore should have a different type of guideline we will be discussing this today. Another classical barrier is that many countries don't have data on emission factors based on fluxes. So what they have is one-time stock measurement of different conditions of mangroves. So, or if we are lucky they do have a representative stock value of different conditions of mangroves like from conserved to degraded to regenerating to locked mangroves. So the question is how we move from one value of a stock into something that is translated into the changes of carbon that are needed as emission factors to report the greenhouse emissions associated to this forest type. We will be dealing with that. Another classical question is the soil carbon component of these blue carbon. Most countries in the region that are doing their efforts to report mangroves in their greenhouse gas communications in their national communications and greenhouse gas inventories. They only have above ground biomass data or changes in carbon in the above ground. But as we all know, soil is one of the most important tools for mangroves and therefore to have a complete reporting we would need to incorporate dynamics of the carbon in the soils at least for the mangroves. So what can be done towards that direction? And then another classical question that countries in the region themselves were posing and they were kind of stopping and having the progress is why would be the difference between working on blue carbon within the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement and working on a voluntary market at the project or a jurisdictional level that for some countries it seems more feasible to start in a lower scale to work with their blue carbon initiative. So these are a few of the topics that will be discussing today. And I'd like to also start with some considerations. First would be the definition of blue carbon. I would say blue carbon right now starts to appear in different contexts with different definitions. But I think and it's not officially defined within UNFCCC. There are some mentionings of it in the special report on ocean and cryosphere. But in this webinar and I think that for most of us or most of the governments that are participating into this webinar and a warm welcome to you all. Blue carbon incorporates three ecosystems. It incorporates mangroves, it incorporates coastal wetlands and it incorporates seagrasses. In this webinar we're only going to focus on mangroves. And this is just because most of the countries that are participating into this webinar and that they are the reason for this webinar today to support these Latin American countries and their governments have most of the data that they have. It's a mangrove. Some countries like Mexico do have seagrass data. But let's start with mangroves, which is the one that most countries are more advanced and more familiar with. So even though blue carbon is a more general ecosystem concept, we're going to focus on mangrove in this session. The second consideration is that we're all fully aware that mangroves offer a diversity of ecosystem services. And as I was mentioning before, I myself and we are working on the role of mangrove green infrastructure to protect coastal communities against extreme events, hurricanes in the Caribbean and the Mesoamerican shores. So mangroves also have a role in terms of supporting biodiversity, in terms of, as I said, sea level rise, fight against sea level rise by accretion, sedimentation processes, food security as well since they are also responsible for sheltering certain early stages of some fish, some commercial fish that then move out of the mangroves towards the ocean. So we are fully aware that there is more than mitigation services provided than mangroves, but in this webinar we are going to focus on the role of mangroves as mitigating sequestrating carbon as part of the fight against climate change. And therefore very focusing towards mitigation targets and towards end-deceased mitigation. End-deceased include both adaptation and mitigation, but this webinar is only mitigation. Also, you will see that some of the questions that we'll be focusing today are real questions from real governments in the regions, and that's why we are targeting these questions. It's not that there are not many other questions that could be asked, but these are some of the questions that we are trying to answer. To some of these governments that are joining us today. We will open a section of extra questions after these presentations, after each of these talks, so there will be space for extra questions when yours are not included there. Also, and as a final warning, and I will gratitude to the speakers that I will be now introducing. Please, let's make sure that we understand the discussion of this webinar as a non-prescriptive approach. The speakers will share their experiences. They will navigate with potential options, but there are many options possible. Countries and governments are free to choose whatever options and methodologies they prefer. They are more ready. They are more aligned with the national circumstances. So by no means, whatever is said in this webinar responds to a prescriptive methodological approach against or in favor of one or other. It's just certain panorama of different options that countries could use to enlighten their next steps. So, without further ado, we're going to have three presentations. Peter is right now in a meeting, so we're going to start with Amy, but I'm going to introduce Peter first. So Peter Iversen is the team leader of the land use, land use change and forestry at the United Nations Framework Convention of Flemish and Secretariat in Guam. Peter has a lot of experience in the Lula CF and the Red Plus negotiations. He has been more than 20 years working on the nexus between nature and resource management and working for organizations like FAO, UNDP and currently he's working under the UNFGC. He's also been a long-term consultant for under the several UN organizations, development banks, NGOs and private sector. He was the co-chair of the UNFGC negotiations for Red Plus and also accounting of agriculture and Lula CF under the Kyoto Protocol. And also he's been involved in, has co-chair of agricultural discussions under the SUBSTEP. He has some hands-on experience on the Red Plus mechanism. He was supporting the Cambodia government with the red in his face. And then he's currently supervising the Danish government, he's himself a Danish national on the reporting of the land use emissions and removals of greenhouse gas inventories under the UNFGC. And he's an expert reviewer for IPCC with practice guidelines and conducts technical analysis of Red Plus results and participates in numerous workshops as the one today. So our gratitude for Peter and UNFGC colleagues for being here today. Then let me introduce Amy. Amy will be our first speaker. And Amy Schmidt, she's the head of the blue carbon program at Vera. She's the program development manager and she coordinates all the program development initiatives for various voluntary carbon market programs, including BCS Voluntary Carbon Standards, the CCB and SD VISTA programs. In this capacity, she identifies, develops and implements the improvements of program requirements and processes. And she also explores opportunities for the scaling up of bio sequestration activities, especially focusing on blue carbon. So also Amy will be introducing the topic of blue carbon within the voluntary carbon market and then we'll open a space for her to be asked questions that countries could have. Also, unfortunately, he's not able to make it. As I mentioned, there are some bad news today for this person because they are having some COVID health issues that have prevented him to participate. But Jorge Herrera is a dear colleague of ours of C4. He's been collaborating with us in Latin America long term, very well known researcher on mangrove restoration dynamics, extreme experience, hands on experience, extremely useful on both developing mangrove restoration activities, very focused on hydrological restoration rather than on great forestation of mangrove, which now within C4 we are publishing these guidelines on lessons learned of mangrove restoration action. He is a researcher within the Simba Stutt Merida Yucatan Units and he is responsible for the mangrove monitoring program in the Yucatan Peninsula. Some of you might know him and in the next email, these emails of these speakers will be shared so that in case you need to communicate with them. Without further ado, I'd like to open the floor for Amy Schmidt from the Vera so that she can start her presentation. Thank you so much, Amy. Amy, perfect. Hi. Yes, thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to speak with all of you about blue carbon with Vera and blue carbon in the voluntary market in general. As Rosa mentioned, I am the program development manager here at Vera and I lead our blue carbon work within our nature based innovations work that we are doing. So before I get started, I wanted to give a brief introduction to Vera for those of you who may not be familiar with us. We are a nonprofit organization that started off as the verified carbon standard a number of years ago. And have more recently expanded our work into other standards and frameworks that deal with climate change issues and sustainable development. And so now we manage a number of different standards for project and landscape level certifications. Today during this presentation, I will primarily be focusing on our VCS program, the verified carbon standard. Since that is the program that's used for certifying voluntary climate claims. Specifically in my presentation, I'll be walking through an overview of the voluntary carbon market for those of you who may not be as familiar with it. And then I'll go into some of the specifics of the VCS program, including how it can be used blue carbon methodologies and kind of greenhouse gas methodologies in general. The project development process and what that entails. Also some information about monitoring reporting and verification requirements under the VCS program. Providing a couple of project examples for blue carbon projects and also about how VCS projects can link with other programs to certify their non carbon benefits. I'll also walk through some of the opportunities and challenges that we see for voluntary blue carbon project development, and I'll get into a little bit of UNFCCC versus voluntary accounting and how they can work together and also some of the differences that there may be between those two different types of accounting. So quickly to give an overview of voluntary carbon markets. This is a graph that was produced by the ecosystem marketplace, which is a function of forest trends that provides information about all of the credits carbon credits issued in the voluntary car in the voluntary market as a whole. And so from this graph. You'll see that the VCS standard is by far the largest voluntary standard and most widely used standard. So in the graph, both the bars that are represented by the dark blue color and the turquoise color are credits issued from VCS projects. So this is information from 2019 and so this is kind of the general trend that we see that VCS is very widely used in the voluntary carbon market. We've also seen an increasing importance of natural climate solutions, both within the VCS program and with VCU is issued but also in the voluntary market as a whole. And so in this graph, it shows VCU issuances over time with issuances from AFLU projects, agriculture, forestry and other land use, including any blue carbon in the green color and VCU issuances from all other project types in the kind of medium blue color. And so, especially starting in 2017, we've seen a switch to where most of the carbon credit issuances from the VCS program are from AFLU projects, and actually these issuances are really driving an increase in the total issuance volume. And so that suggests that, first of all, there's an increased demand for voluntary carbon credits in general, but also that there's really an increased demand in these natural climate solutions. And just to be very specific about this, for natural climate solutions we mean both conservation projects, including reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation or red, and also restoration and removals including reforestation, agriculture and soil carbon, grassland restoration and conservation, and blue carbon. And blue carbon can be pretty unique in this respect because even conservation projects, which results in emission reductions also results in carbon sequestration in the soils. And so another trend that we're starting to see is that a lot of demand is coming from sources that are very interested in these emission removals, so projects that sequester carbon in natural ecosystems, rather than only reducing emissions. So getting more into the detail of what is a voluntary greenhouse gas program. So for the VCS program, we have most of our rules and requirements are governed by the VCS standard document. And there are also accounting methodologies, which are used for projects to know how to monitor and measure their emission reductions or removals. There's independent auditing, which is very important to ensure that projects are developed at implemented and monitored in accordance with the rules of the methodology and the rules of the standard. And we also have a transparent registry system where all of our projects are available for anyone to view, and where all credits issued from projects are transparently listed with any serial numbers or associated information. So within kind of this construct, I'll go into a bit more detail about the VCS standard. So as I mentioned, this is the document that includes guiding principles and high level requirements for all VCS projects. And so within this document there's information about the activities and interventions that are eligible under the VCS program, and in many cases there are specific requirements and safeguards for specific activities. So for example, blue carbon fits within a category that we call wetland restoration and conservation. And within the VCS standard, there are a number of specific requirements that all wetland conservation and restoration projects must follow. And these are intended to ensure that projects are accounting correctly for their emission reductions and removals. And they're doing so accurately. And also that they're not causing any other type of or causing any type of harm to the environment or kind of downstream effects from a project activity that aren't taken into account. The VCS standard also provides information about project links requirements and the timeframe over which projects can be credited. So for all AFLU projects, including blue carbon, projects must have activities conducted for a minimum time period of 30 years. And they can credit over a time period of 20 years to a 100 year maximum. There are also certain legal considerations that are set out for projects to take into account. And so this mostly includes ownership. So for any project, the entity that claims ownership of the project must be able to demonstrate that they have control over the project activities and the rights to claim the emission reductions or removals that they are claiming under the VCS program. And so in certain cases where, for example, communities may have traditional rights to the land or where there are government rights to the land, that would mean that you would just need to work with any of those other entities to ensure that there's clear ownership of the project. We also require all projects to comply with any local laws and regulations that are relevant to the activity. Of course, the VCS standard sets out certain social and environmental safeguards. So this includes community engagement where it's relevant to ensure that any communities involved within the project or that could have their kind of traditional lands affected by the project activities are aware and have an opportunity to provide consent for the project to occur. And there are also environmental safeguards to ensure that the project is not causing any type of environmental harm. Of course, we all want, you know, blue carbon projects to do environmental good. So it's important to address these to make sure that no negative effects are occurring. Finally, one risk for any carbon project that's based on land or in wetlands is the risk of non permanence of the emission reductions or removals of the project has claimed. And so this could be from a loss event. So kind of in a traditional terrestrial forest context, you can think of that as being a fire occurring that results in carbon stock loss from the project area. And so under the VCS program we address that through a pooled buffer account. So all affluent projects are required to assess their risk of non permanence using a standard tool and contribute a certain percentage of their credits to the non non permanence risk buffer. And in any case for a loss event within the project area, the full amount of the buffer credits are available to cover that loss event. So this ensures that any credits issued under the VCS program represent permanent emission reductions or removals. So methodologies are very important components of a project. They set out a lot of the key ways that projects demonstrate that they're eligible to be a voluntary carbon project and also ways that projects must monitor and calculate their emission reductions and removals and removals. So the first component of the methodology is the applicability conditions. And so these are sets of conditions that define the activities to which the methodology applies. And they're important because they're very specific to a certain set of activities. And in certain cases they're also potentially applicable only to a set of activities in a certain geography. And so it's making sure that it limits the projects that can apply it to ones that actually should be applying it and are doing those activities in areas where it makes sense for the way that the rest of the methodology is set out. The methodology also sets out the project boundary requirements. And so this is not necessarily the spatial boundary of the project. So the actual land area that's included within the project within a greenhouse gas program. The project boundary refers to the carbon stocks and pools that are included and also the greenhouse gas emissions that can be claimed by the project. So for example, the project boundary may include above and below ground biomass, soil carbon, avoided CO2 emissions from avoided deforestation and avoided greenhouse gas emissions from biomass burning, for example, depending on the activity. So a methodology will also set out how projects are required to demonstrate what the baseline scenario is and then quantify the emissions that would have occurred in the baseline scenario. And so the baseline scenario is what would have happened in the absence of the project activity. So for a mangrove project that is a conservation project, you may be able to say that the baseline scenario would be that the mangroves would be degraded or deforested. And so with project activities, then you would be able to say that they are not degraded or deforested. So in the baseline scenario, you would have to go through a procedure to demonstrate exactly how much of the project area is expected to be degraded or deforested over the project lifetime. And then also go through the process to quantify what emissions would have occurred from that degradation and deforestation. So the additionality is a key component of any voluntary greenhouse gas project. It is essentially saying that or it's a demonstration that the project would not have occurred in the absence of carbon finance. So basically that the carbon market is providing an incentive for this project to occur in addition to what would have occurred under the without project scenario. In general, for many of our AFLU projects, they're required to use what we call project method, which involves kind of an investment analysis and a common practice analysis to demonstrate that the project is not kind of financially attractive to do, or that it's not common within the region for this type of activity to occur without carbon or other types of finance. So for many blue carbon projects within our methodologies that are approved under Vera, we have what we call standardized methods. And these set out a list of conditions that if they're met by the project, they're deemed as being automatically additional. We have those in place because there simply are not many blue carbon projects out there. They've been, you know, they faced a number of challenges, which I'll get into a little bit later. But in most cases, it is very clear that these projects need carbon finance and we've been able to demonstrate per our rules that they can fall into this class of kind of automatically additional projects. Finally, the methodology will set out procedures for quantification of emission reductions and removals based on the activities that are included within the methodology and the carbon stocks and pools and greenhouse gases included within the project boundary. And they'll also establish monitoring procedures for the specific parameters and types of information that needed to be monitored by the project in order for them to be able to claim emission reductions and actually kind of input those input that information into the quantification procedures. So we have a number of methodologies that are currently available for blue carbon projects globally with the VCS program. So we have a methodology for tidal wetlands and seagrass restoration that was approved under the VCS program. We also have a revision to a red plus methodology that will incorporate blue carbon conservation and restoration activities. And that revision should be coming soon. It's in the final stages of the approval process. So I'm hoping soon means within the next week or two. And so this will be the first methodology in a major greenhouse gas program that will support blue carbon conservation activities. So we see it as being very important to unlocking carbon finance for those types of activities. CDM methodologies can also be used under the VCS program. And so there are a couple of a four station reforestation of mangroves methodologies that were originally approved under the CDM, both for large scale and small scale. But as I mentioned, those can be used by VCS projects. So what is the process to develop a VCS project. So as I mentioned, the methodology that a project chooses is very important because it establishes some of these very key components of a project, including the activities that are eligible, and how the project goes about actually quantifying the emission reductions and the number of goals that it receives. So once an appropriate methodology is selected, you would draft a project description. And so this includes setting out certain elements of the project design. Most of which are included within the methodology and are one of the key components that I walked through a couple of slides ago. But there is also opportunity to describe other things about the project and kind of give a bit more of a summary of the activities included. Once the project description is drafted, it can undergo validation. And so this is the process where an independent third party auditor will assess the project description against the methodology that's applied and also against our program to ensure that it was designed in accordance with both the methodology and our rules and requirements. After a validation, a project can register and then can go move forward with monitoring the project results. So again, per the methodology that that will set out the specific carbon stocks and greenhouse gases that need to be monitored. So once that's monitored, the project can also go through a process called verification where a third party auditor will verify that the project has been implemented in accordance with the methodology our rule and our rules and also that the emission reductions and the rules that are being claimed have actually occurred and were calculated correctly. After verification, a project can issue verified carbon units or BCUs. One note is that validation and the first verification can actually be conducted at the same time, which can result in a cost savings, generally because the auditor will only need to go on site once rather than going on site for the validation and then coming back for the verification, but they can also be conducted separately if that works better. In terms of cost of this process, the main costs for voluntary greenhouse gas certification are associated with the validation and verification process. As I mentioned, these are both conducted by independent third party auditors. And so a project generally will need to obviously pay them for their time to do the validation or verification. But for AFLU projects, they almost always are required to go on site to conduct a site visit for both validation and verification. And obviously, right now with a number of travel restrictions in place, due to the global pandemic, we are being a bit more flexible with our rules around this and allowing for remote verifications to occur where possible. So it's, it may be that in the future, those will be more commonplace, but kind of historically, it's always involved a team going to the project site. There are some specific MRV requirements for VCS. So for kind of conducting a verification, the timing on that can be flexible. So projects are not required to conduct annual verifications or verifications within any certain time period. So we can include multiple years of monitored data per verification, if that works out better, or if you want to conduct a verification more frequently, for example, on a annual basis, that is also allowed. So as I mentioned, in terms of monitored data, that will be in accordance with the requirements of the applied methodology. And that will be used with the equations and calculations within the methodology to calculate the carbon stock changes and or emission reductions and removals that can be claimed. For verification, there's a requirement that that's conducted by an approved independent third party auditor. And then finally, Vera will also review and approve on any monitoring reports that are submitted by projects. As a kind of a final check to make sure that they are, in fact, applying the rules correctly. So for blue carbon projects in general. And again, this is really methodology specific. So it's a bit difficult to say for all of them. But in general, they'll include kind of parameters and methods for monitoring above and below ground biomass and carbon stock changes. Soil carbon stock, they may include emissions from fossil fuel use and biomass burning. If those are expected to decrease in the project scenario. The VCS approved methodologies also include what's called an aloxanus carbon estimation. And so aloxanus carbon is carbon that is sequestered outside of the ecosystem. And then generally is kind of transported to the project area through sediment. And for a variety of reasons, projects are required to estimate that both in the baseline scenario and the project scenario to ensure that they're only claiming the emission reductions or carbon stock changes that occurred directly as a result of the project activities. They also include for conservation projects, any area of kind of expected or I guess area of expected wetland degradation compared to area where wetland degradation actually occurred. And then of course, projects are required to estimate their non permanence risk, including the risk from sea level rise. We have a couple of blue carbon projects that are either under development or registered under the program. So the first blue carbon project in Latin America that has listed on our registry is being developed as a conservation project in Colombia. And this will include a variety of conservation activities to conserve a large area of mangroves and that project is under development. And there are a few other mangrove restoration projects that are registered and have been through kind of the validation and verification process that are located in Africa and Asia and more information about all of these projects is available on the website where you'll be able to see all of the project documents, including the project descriptions and monitoring reports and validation and verification reports about these projects and how they were designed. One thing I wanted to touch quickly on is additional certifications. So these are additional standards that can be used to certify environmental and social safeguards or additional benefits. And both of these that I'll talk through very quickly, allow for a label to be added to VCUs issued from projects that are verified to both standards. So a VCU with a CCB label or a VCU with an SD VISTA label, which indicates to any buyers of credits that the project is one that's not only resulting in these climate benefits but also have these other environmental or social benefits associated. So the climate community and biodiversity standards has been around for a number of years and was developed by a number of environmental and social nonprofits and is now managed by Vera. And it allows projects to certify benefits to climate, local communities and the environment, and projects have to have benefits to all three of those components. The Sustainable Development Verified Impact Standard is a bit newer and was released at the beginning of 2019 and it allows projects to certify their contributions to the Sustainable Development Goals. So it has a very strong link with the SDGs. The SD VISTA Standard is also unique because it allows projects to issue assets that aren't carbon credits. And so actually one of the first assets and methodology is this being developed under that program is for coastal resilience. And that's being led by the Nature Conservancy. So this is kind of a really important highlight of not only the climate benefits of blue carbon projects but also these other benefits. And what we've heard is that there is additionally kind of significant demand for these coastal resilience benefits and that using kind of both of these programs together may unlock significant finance for blue carbon activities. So as you saw from the kind of blue carbon projects slide, we don't have many blue carbon projects that are registered under the VCS program yet. And this is an area of kind of action that we think is very important, not only because of the significant climate benefits that it has but also because of many of those non-carbon benefits that are associated with blue carbon ecosystems. And so earlier this year we started a blue carbon working group to explore a lot of the opportunities and challenges associated with blue carbon projects and also to identify solutions to those challenges or ways that we could help support scaling up of blue carbon activities. And so what we've heard, this is kind of a very brief overview or summary of what we've heard so far from the working group, but there is a really high demand for blue carbon credits and especially for kind of credits that represent carbon sequestration or levels. So there aren't many blue carbon projects out there right now. And what we've heard is that the demand for blue carbon credits actually, you know, significantly outweighs the current supply of blue carbon credits. There's also a lot of opportunity around the associated non-carbon benefits including coastal resilience, as I mentioned. The barriers to blue carbon projects include that the methodology that includes conservation activities is not yet approved. There's also a lot of technical complexity that is associated with wetlands and wetland methodologies. So including hydrological connectivity with other ecosystems that needs to be taken into account. And the estimation of a lot of this carbon as I mentioned, and then also planning for sea level rise and being able to estimate that over a long time periods and planning for how wetland migration may occur inland over those long time frames. So finally, data availability can be very, very difficult, especially for projects that are starting in regions where it's not available and they may need to go out and collect a significant amount of data at the project site. So quickly before I end my presentation, I wanted to talk a little bit about some differences between UNFCCC accounting and accounting under the VCS program. So first of all, there's kind of country versus site level accounting. So, you know, for the UNFCCC, if you're reporting at the country level or for subnational regions, the type of data that you need versus what you would need for site level accounting is different just because of the scale that you are looking at. There's also differences in the types of ecosystems and activities that are generally included in the UNFCCC versus those that could be done under VCS. So for most NDCs and forest reference emission levels, they focus on kind of conservation or avoided deforestation and mangroves. Whereas under the VCS program, we currently support conservation or we will support conservation, hopefully very soon, but we support restoration of mangrove sea grasses and salt marshes. So we do allow for kind of all of the blue carbon ecosystems right now. There are also some differences in the carbon stocks that are generally included and the greenhouse gas emission sources included in accounting. So depending on what's kind of included in a forest reference emissions level. A lot of times that may only include above ground biomass whereas under VCS you can do above ground biomass and soil carbon and just kind of get a lot more specific in the carbon stocks that are included within the project. So finally, there are some areas where there could be kind of working together between project and national level or subnational level accounting. So where mangroves are included within the definition of a forest or within the forest reference emission level, blue carbon projects may be able to nest into the frail. And so essentially what that means is that they can align their accounting with that national or subnational accounting of the forest reference emission level. So some caveats to this, however, are that frels may not always include all blue carbon ecosystems. So, you know, right now if you're doing a project with sea grasses, for example, you are probably not going to be able to nest. Whereas if you're doing a mangrove project, it's more likely depending on the specific country context. They may also not always include all of the relevant carbon stocks pools and greenhouse gases. So for example, the soil carbon pool is not as frequently included, even though that's a very important pool for blue carbon projects and can be claimed under the VCS program. And finally, a lot of frels do not include kind of carbon removals or carbon stock enhancements, which are included under certain VCS project types include that include restoration. So there's a potential for double counting of emission reductions and removals. If a project is claiming something under a voluntary program, and so claiming like an emission reduction under a voluntary program. And that same emission reduction is being claimed by a country. And so being able to nest helps to align the accounting so that there's less risk of double counting. And another way that we're kind of considering addressing this, which is less relevant for the affluent sector, but could be relevant for blue carbon projects that are not able to nest or aren't able to nest kind of in the short term is that double counting may not be as much of an issue between a voluntary project and a country for purely voluntary carbon claims. So for example, carbon credits that are purchased by sources that are doing so for their corporate social responsibility. So in that case, they're kind of reported and claimed under completely different mechanisms and so there may not be a risk of double counting. However, we're seeing in a lot of compliance programs including Corsia that there really will be a requirement for affluent projects to be nested into a jurisdictional program to have kind of assurance that there is no risk of any type of double counting or claiming occurring. But that is kind of an ongoing conversation within our organization and other voluntary greenhouse gas programs and users and of GHG programs and people in that space. So it's evolving a little bit. But that's kind of our current thinking. So I will end my presentation there. Thank you all for the opportunity to speak with you and provide more information about blue carbon under the VCS program. Thank you very much, Amy, for this very informative session on the carbon and the vera. That was a long chat. So thanks a lot. So let me open the space now for questions. Please use your chat to make questions, try to be very short and specific on your questions. We're going to open 15 minutes for questions to Amy. So I'm going to take a few seconds to start working on merging questions that are similar, but I ask you to ask very specific questions. Okay, let's start with the question by Diego Hopkins. Amy, he would like to know if there is any way for indigenous communities to implement a carbon project on themselves without intermediaries. And if there is the possibility of direct contact between community and verifier. And in the case of a stained owned lands, can the government present an initiative to implement a carbon project and generate benefits to distribute among, for example, indigenous community. So let me start with the first question. Is there a way for indigenous communities to implement a carbon project on themselves without intermediaries. This is rather important for Peru this question comes from Peru that has a very important participation from forest stewardship coming from indigenous communities. Thank you. Yes, so indigenous communities or local communities are able to develop projects themselves, as long as they can, you know, meet the ownership requirements that I walked through earlier. In practice, oftentimes it can be very kind of technically, you need a high technical capacity to develop a project, in which case we see a lot of project developers working with local communities that that's definitely not a requirement to do so. Perfect. His second question Amy was, is there a possibility of direct contact between communities and verifiers. Yes. So if a community is leading a project, they would be expected to kind of interact directly with a verifier. And also, for our kind of social safeguards that we have under VCS. Even where communities aren't leading the project, they're required to be involved and generally as part of a verifier going out and auditing that involvement, they will have opportunities for direct interaction with communities as part of the assessment process. Thank you Amy. And Diego's last question has to do also with the redistribution of the benefits coming from this project. He says, in the case of the state on lands, can the government present an initiative to implement a carbon project and generate benefits that then gets distributed among indigenous communities that are far away from the area of the project. So, yes, under the VCS program, we don't have specific requirements for benefit sharing. So, you know, that would be kind of outside of the project description or project documentation. So the government would be able to do that. And just for any communities that are directly involved in the project, they would need to be able to give their kind of consent to any project activities, including any benefit sharing mechanisms that are established, even though we don't have specific requirements for what those are. Thank you, Amy. Then there are two questions about time. Do you know or can you tell us when the BCS standard in blue, carbon, red plus will be available? Yes. So the methodology revision is in the final stages of approval. So I'm hoping that that will be available within the next couple of weeks. We'll have an announcement on the vera website. And if you're on the stakeholders list, you'll also, or you should also get an announcement that way. But we're hoping within the next couple of weeks that that will be officially approved and available for use. Thank you. Yes, we will be sharing this presentation. Some of your links appear without the link. We just see that you have connected it. So we will make sure that some of these links are also shared. So some people know exactly where to get this information. Also, we have a question from Elisa Lopez. She's mentioning as he's asking you whether you could explain a bit more about the status for the conservation methodology. And he says, understand the barriers of vera BCS in the spacing on the topic. So, Elisa, please elaborate the second question, but let's just start with the first one. So can you develop a bit more of the status of the conservation methodology? And I think when she says the statutes, maybe you can describe a bit what conservation probably means in relationship to maybe a restoration. Thank you. Yeah. So the conservation methodology is based around kind of an existing red plus methodology. So for conservation projects. They are required to, you know, do activities that will reduce wetland deforestation or degradation and count for that by estimating where kind of what's causing that wetland degradation, where that's occurring and how the project is actually reducing that. And so in practice what that may mean for addressing the drivers of deforestation is working with local communities to find alternative livelihoods so they are not, you know, cutting down mangroves for firewood or something like that or working with them to establish sustainable fisheries which are very linked with blue carbon ecosystems. Restoration activities would involve more going out and restoring degraded wetlands so planting mangroves or helping to reestablish mangrove nurseries or ecosystems there that are not already exist in existence. Thank you, Amy. We have a question from the government of Surinam. If you could kind of explain a bit, and this would also be part of the discussion with the UN FTC, Peter will be discussing about this, but she's asking if you could kindly go through the double counting section of your last slide please. Sure. So double counting is where, for example, the government and a voluntary project are claiming the same emission reduction or removal. So it's being claimed or counted twice. And so for a blue carbon project, there are kind of two ways that we're thinking that this would be addressed. So the first is through nesting. So aligning the project accounting with kind of a national or subnational baseline for deforestation and forest degradation, especially for mangroves. In which case there's, you know, it's aligned with like a government baseline so there's not a risk of kind of double counting between the government and the project. And then in terms of, and this is more important for activities that aren't able to nest within a national baseline. So in the context of blue carbon that may be restoration where that's not included, or it may include these other ecosystems that generally aren't included in a national baseline or prel like seagrasses and salt marshes. But we're seeing a lot of the market kind of agree or begin to agree that there's a difference between a purely voluntary claim for project or site level activity versus a government's claim or reporting of what's happened within the country or subnational region as a whole. And so what we're seeing is that for voluntary claims, there may not be kind of this strict requirement that all voluntary projects have nesting within the national baseline for activities that are included in them, or what's called a corresponding adjustment where the government adjusts their emission reductions and removals that they're claiming happened within the country. Basically to say that, you know, something that happened in the project area didn't actually happen within the country, which isn't as accurate since it did happen there, but the project is just claiming that the activities that they conducted are what was what resulted in those emission reductions. And so that's what we're seeing in the voluntary market. The only caveat is for a structure adjustment made to national accounting for any credits that are used in that compliance market. And so that would be things like Portia. Thank you, Amy. Three last questions. One comes about the price of blue carbon credits. There is a question of what is the estimated price for tone of blue carbon and whether this is different to normal or other type of reduction units and let me ask you on the top of that. What is the cost or medium cost of a blue carbon project? So if someone would like to start thinking of applying for this type of methodologies, what would be the cost? And the third question in this line of action, you are mentioning that there is much more demand than supply for blue carbon. But one of the problems that we are having in the region is that even though we do have already decided areas were to do restorations, for example, in the case of Mexico, there is already like a strategy of which areas could be restored. It is hard to connect with the donors. So how could we connect with these corporate responsibility initiatives that could pay in advance on some of these projects? Do you maybe have some suggestions on these things? Thank you. Sure. So in terms of the cost for project development and the price for credits, we aren't ever directly involved in selling credits. That's between the project proponent and buyer. But what we've heard is that for certain blue carbon projects, they're seeing very high prices compared to other VCUs. I've heard project developers are kind of conservatively estimating $10 or $15 per ton, which is significantly higher than what we see even for other types of affluent credits. In terms of cost, again, as I mentioned, we don't, I guess, Vera isn't involved in kind of the highest cost components of the project, which are validation and verification. From what we've heard for other affluent project types, for example, red, the cost can vary just depending on kind of project location complexity, the auditor that you choose and how far they have to travel to the project site. But for a project, it could be between $20,000 US to, you know, 40,000 or more US. And then in terms of connecting kind of projects with donors and funding, this is also a barrier that has been raised in the context of the Vera blue carbon working group. And so we're, we're thinking through ways that that could be addressed. As I mentioned, kind of in the past, Vera hasn't really played this role where we're really connecting projects with funding or with buyers and credits. But we're seeing this kind of huge to be between the demand for blue carbon credits and actually being able to get funding to early stage projects. So I don't have much information on what that could look like now. But we do see it as being very important to figure out ways to connect this finance and this early stage funding with projects. Perfect. Um, there are quite a lot of other questions. Some of the government in the region also wanted to know a bit more information about how blue carbon projects can be nested with the trails. And then we will finish with one more methodological question on using jurisdictional standards for blue carbon and some of the difference between the three methodologies that you mentioned. Thanks very much, Amy. Thanks a lot. Yep. So in terms of nesting blue carbon projects with fells right now it's really limited to countries that include mangroves within their fells and so in that case mangrove projects would be mangrove conservation projects would be able to nest per kind of the process that any other project would take to nest within a fell. Vera is releasing guidance and requirements on nesting that's more specific than what we have available now, likely early next year. We're currently working on developing that and thinking through a lot of the technical issues. And that will provide more information about kind of allocation approaches of how a frail is actually allocated down to kind of the project level and things like that and specific requirements that need to be included. But if you have kind of more specific questions about that, please feel free to reach out to me. I'm not as involved in kind of the jurisdictional and nesting world but I would be able to connect you with my colleagues who are and we can have a joined up discussion about kind of blue carbon and nesting. Thank you. The other questions were a bit more methodological and also we'll finish with one question from Panama. There was a question about whether we could use the jurisdictional standards for blue carbon. And also there was someone asking what are the differences between VM007, V1.5 and V1.7 and there are also questions about the V07. So yeah, maybe you can explain very briefly. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. So right now I'm, I'm assuming that you're talking about the jurisdictional nested bread program under Vera and so I apologize if you're not and I'm answering specific to that program. Right now WRC wetland restoration and conservation is not included very kind of in a lot of detail within the JNR program. I mentioned earlier that we're releasing kind of this additional nesting guidance and requirements and we're also making certain updates to JNR. And one of those updates that may or may not be ready by January but it's potentially in a longer timeframe is adding specific requirements for how to include WRC activities within a JNR program. So it's, it's something that's not very well defined right now that we are definitely thinking about and we know it's important. Thank you. Thanks very much, Amy. So briefly the difference between the M7, 1.5 and 1.6 and the last question comes from the government of Panama, which I think it's actually very important for those countries that have indigenous communities and in coastal areas about land tenure. So which type of safeguards do you have for land tenure and for avoiding complications around that. Thanks very much. Yep. So the differences between VM7 version 1.5 and version 1.6 are that version 1.6 will include specific modules and procedures for tidal wetland projects including conservation and restoration activities. So version 1.5 does not include those. It includes activities on peatlands, but it's not specific to the tidal wetland context. And so there are a number of VM7 is a modular methodology, so it includes a lot of different documents. So the version 1.6 revision includes new modules specific to tidal wetlands and also some revisions to the existing modules to incorporate tidal wetlands where it's relevant. And for land tenure with local communities that's really addressed with our social safeguards for all AFLU projects. And so specifically for any communities that may have any type of right to the land, including either kind of traditional rights or traditional use of the land. So strategic proponents and you know entities conducting project activities are required to get what's called free prior and informed consent from all of those communities for implementing activities on the land. So the project activities do have land tenure they must basically have all the information that they need and be able to have the opportunity to provide or not provide consent to the project activities before they start to occur. So it's a very important safeguard that we have within the standard. Thank you everyone, governments of the region. We will put you in touch with Amy and find a way that she's not overwhelmed with hundreds of questions either. So maybe if necessary we can try to arrange a second webinar more specific on the region and questions from this government so that we can address that. And thank you so much for for this long presentation and very informative discussion of the Bear and Blue Carbon. Thanks very much, Amy. So thank you very much, Amy for for this fantastic presentation. Very useful. We will actually offer information about your email and find a way that you don't get overwhelmed with with email so maybe organizing the second webinar if necessary. Peter is now your turn Peter Iverson thanks very much for being here. I just know if you have any difficulty in sharing your screen or if you would prefer me to share the screen and then you let me know when I should go to the next one. Okay, perfect. Thank you. Good morning or afternoon. I hope you can hear me and you can see the screen. So this presentation or now I'm very sorry I was not here in the beginning of the webinar because of some other commitment and but this just to explain that this presentation came based on a number of questions that we discussed in the call the Rosa. A little while ago, and actually the slides are sort of reflecting these questions. So I'm trying to respond to those. So I hope I hope that will make sense. So, yeah, I maybe just to present myself on team leads in the airflow unit in what we call the transparency division in the climate change project and fun. So our work is, of course, we work with effort which means a very large proportion of our work is about red plus to support the technical assessment of red plus reference levels, and later also the technical analysis of red plus results. In addition to that, we also support sort of Lulusev greenhouse gas inventory reporting and review and we support. Also, we have, we are supporting now the Konevia joint work on agricultural program where we have a serious workshops happening. So this is where I'm coming from. So what we of course mangroves are also included something in sometimes in red plus submissions. And one of the questions here is mangroves forest. I mean, really, it's up to countries how they will, how they define what is a forest. I think many countries maybe are looking to like what was done, for example, under the Marrakesh Accords. Marrakesh Accords was agreed for the Kyoto Protocol, or it's not really relevant here. But of course, I think most definitions of forest which actually come to have to define forest when they make a submission is about like what is the height of the of the trees at maturity, what are the minimum area, what are the minimum crown cover, for example, these are three typical thresholds where and this also means, of course, if you plant a new forest, it doesn't meet the threshold right away. But still, we have this, if it has the ability potential to reach the threshold at maturity, then it is a forest from the very beginning anyway. We actually had one country that also included the diameter of the tree as part of the definition. So there are different options in the decision that is sort of providing the guidance on how to make a red cross reference level. There is an annex and in there it is, it's basically says that parties have to define a forest and if this definition if this is different from what how they do it when they have defined forest for the National Greenhouse Gas Inventory and for other international reporting then they should provide some explanation why they have this difference, but it is possible to have a difference. What we have seen, I remember in particular, for example, Bangladesh, they have a very large mangrove area, and they made a kind of exception because they said they really want to include this mangrove in part of the red. So I think the minimum tree height was five meters and that would barely make it, but still they would want to call this a forest. And that is fine. They just have to be clear about what they're doing. So it's possible to make a technical assessment of what they have submitted. I think we had another one recently with Srinam also. So this is clearly possible to include your mangrove as forest if this is what you want. And I guess it's also possible in some cases if it does not fit to the definitions, then of course it's not part of it. What we also see is that a number of countries are saying that, I mean some countries are saying that plantations, they don't consider this in the context of red even though they are forest. Some are saying that they don't consider, you could say what they call agriculture plantations, which may be like palm oil and this is not part of the forest, while maybe forest plantations like acacia, like where you are producing timber, they want to consider as forest. So there's a number of possibilities. It's just a matter of being clear about it and of course being able to monitor. If you make it too complicated for yourself and are not able to monitor and report, then you probably want a different definition. For the reporting guidelines, basically you should use the most recent one. The most recent one that has been agreed is the IPCC 2006 guidelines from National Greenhouse Gas Inventory, which is sort of covering the forest land. But of course we also have the IPCC 2013 wetland supplement, which is a supplement, so it sort of builds, it adds to the 2006 guidelines. The supplements cover areas that have been re-readed or drained and in fact this could also, it's not only relevant for what you call wetlands, but it's also relevant for forest or even agricultural land. That is on something you would call, that has been drained or re-readed, then you could still use the wetland supplement. It is so that for the wetland supplement, there is a sort of encouragement to use it, but it's not a mandatory thing. So really what countries should do, they should see if they have, you could say, a better methodology in the wetland supplement and then use that if they don't find a better methodology, then you might as well stay with the 2006 guidelines. The refinement from 2019, so this has not been approved by the UNFCCC yet, it has actually not even really been discussed yet. So it is sort of in the middle in a way before approval, it's approved by the IPCC. What we see already in greenhouse gas inventory is that parties are actually, and even also actually we see for wetlands supplement, parties are already starting to use it. The refinement includes more tables and much more sort of, well updated values for many default values for carbon stocks in different forest types, including the tropics and so on. And if this is what you need, then you are most welcome to look at the refinement, even if it's not approved by the UNFCCC yet. So I think this hopefully, let me see if I can move forward. Oh yes, I can, sorry. So these are the, I think I don't need to speak more to this, this is basically just the different IPCC guidance. Peter, can I jump in with a quick question before we move on? Yes, please do. Thank you so much. I am aiming to do this interactive mainly for myself, and then we will open the space for governments to ask you questions. But just we move out of this definition of mangroves, which you very clearly explained that countries can define and then they can adjust definitions depending on their conditions. Regarding the use of the wetland supplement or the AFOLU 2000 IPCC 2006, can countries merge both types of guidance when reporting under the greenhouse gas inventory or under red, or they have to choose one or the other? Thank you. The, I mean, the refinement, the wetland supplement is only a supplement. So you will not find everything in there. So I think you will always have to also build on what's in the 2006 guidelines. I mean, they are, as the title say, about areas that has been somehow wet, either rewetted or drained. And, and you might have other forest areas that are on dry land that has where this is not relevant. Of course, then you would not find any methodologies in the supplement. So in this case, I, yeah, you would need to to mix the mix the tools. There is some discussion about whether you need to use the default values together with the equations. If you use an equation from the IPCC wetland supplement, but there has not been any decision on that. So I think parties can sort of say that this is what makes more sense to us. This is what reflects our situation better than I think it should be possible to use both. Wonderful. Thank you, Peter. Okay, let me see if I can do this slowly because I don't. Okay, but this is also actually what I told you already, I think that the refinement is there is not adopted, but you're welcome to use it, the wetland supplement is encouraged. And, yeah, and you can use it for any not only for what is what the category is wetlands, anything that isn't rain and wet so we can move to the next. Okay, so here's the questions about how to measure. So of course, mangroves are like other four. Well, in principle, the principle is the same as all the force that you have the five carbon pools above ground, below ground biomass, you can have some leads, you can have that wood and you can have soil carbon. When what we see is that there's maybe not necessarily as much data on the mangroves as we have for other force types. And we have actually maybe I should already go to the next because I think I describe it there. So the IPCC, when they, when for estimating the chains in carbon stocks, they have two methods, gain and loss method which basically is, you could say, what are the functions that where you have a loss and the function where you have a gain and then you basically just add the two. And then you have the other one which is called stock difference method which basically you have the stocks at two different times. One of the issues I think mentioned in the other slide here before was, of course, if you have a national forest inventory, then you very often would go to monitor the same area and then you could say you have definitely the same area in two different times, but this is not necessary always. If you can sort of describe this is the forest, you could say more or less undisturbed, and here's a forest that is disturbed. And you can clearly define the difference between the two and you know the disturbed forest have 50% less carbon than the undisturbed, then you don't necessarily need to. You need some data of course to show that it's 50%, but you don't necessarily need to have exactly the same spot where you have monitored. Yeah, we also see different approaches and here because now, for example, they had from forest degradation. So it was not really based on measuring the same spot two different times, but it was linked to the logging that takes place in the forest. So they had some based on some scientific studies, they, they basically looked at, you know, when we take a tree out, it creates some destruction, and they had an equation for how much destruction would sort of be created. It was a cubic meter, I forgot whether it was tons of biomass, what basically linked to the amount of logging, there was some destruction and then based on the logging, they sort of assessed the degradation. So in this case, you need some data of course to sort of show that this equation we have here makes sense and they were lucky also that there is a good scientific article on that and then they just have some national data to put in. There are different ways to do this. And in all cases, you will need some national data, but what I think there's different, often different ways to, to get to the results if necessary. Okay, then. Yeah, so without soil data. So, yeah, this is, of course, again, you need some data that the guidelines probably provide some default values that you can do. And it's also important that for red plus the results are measured in tons of CO2 per year. And this is sort of, you always have to compare what is happening in the, what we would call the result period, compared to the reference level. And, and if you have very high carbon stocks, but they're not changing, then your problem in terms of getting results, I mean you have the high carbon stocks but they are staying high and that's good, of course, but you don't have this change that would, you could say will give a result so I don't know how the dynamics in the solid carbon in mangroves. But of course, if it, if it's very stable, then it is not necessarily creating a lot of results. But of course, if it's not stable, whether it's increasing or it's decreasing if you have destruction of mangroves and now you want to restore. I believe it's the same when you go to the, to the other gases. What we have seen in red plus is when countries report non CO2 gases, basically, if I, I don't know Indonesia because they had drainage of peatlands, but I think from most countries it is only related to forest fires. And here, again, you have some equations, how much biomass is burned and so on. And, and you will get some estimates from the rewriting and rain is again, I would consult the wetland supplement but yeah, but I cannot get closer than that without seeing more what what is there available. Red plus and Phrel. So here I think this was actually the one of the key issues for, for this webinar is that how to do it if you want to have Phrel also for different forest types. So overall, the decisions from Cancun request parties to make a national Phrel or, or if I appropriate as an interim measure, a subnational Phrel in coordination with national circumstances. What we have seen it now we have received submissions for 15 countries actually this year we have 15 which is the most we have so far. So we have 15 different countries that made a submission, and I believe around eight or nine of them have a subnational Phrel, and the rest have a national one. In case where they make a subnational. I mean, there could be different reasons for that. I mean, yeah, I think from country to country that could be different reasons to that. And what happens in the technical assessment of course in the report. I mean, in the submission, the country will explain why it's a national and, and maybe they've also explained how this is a step towards national. And one very important point also when countries make the reference level submission is that it is also recognized in this decision about making the reference levels decision 12 CP 17 that this is a stepwise approach and countries sort of can improve over time include more activities include more pools, but of course also move to the national from the subnational. And that's also a safeguard on avoiding displacement of missions, you could say if you have national then this is more well depending on which activities you have but but then this is also better. What we have seen just for clarification is just because many, many of us when we work with the concept of national reporting we thought national scale, but somehow, at least in my case I never thought that national meant not only national scale but incorporating all the forest types. So can you confirm that the idea of a subnational as interim would also apply not only to working at a different scale other than national so probably regional but also working with not all the first types but just with one first type I think it's important to clarify that national means both geographically national but also incorporating both forest types is that correct. Yeah, yeah, I mean national is sort of the graphic national. But then of course based on the force definition. That say okay, our plantations, for example, because that's a common thing. Plantations we don't consider forced in this context. Then, I, yeah, then this would still be national even if you don't I mean because you have everything that that is within your definition you're having your fellow and what is not within your first definition. It is fine that it's not inside your throat because it is not considered forced in this context. I don't know if that answers the question. Yeah, I mean the question has to do with choosing one for a style in this case mangroves only out of the totality of forest in order to create the blue carbon self standing. And I think basically you've already answered it's it's the way to move forward would be to have all the forest types included in one way but also countries can choose to go for the interim sub national approach and selecting one for a style only in this case mangroves. The same way that for instance Brazil might be reporting on Amazon rainforest separated from serato. So there are some other countries that are also working with very specific forest types and very specific red. Yeah, I think Brazil is not the best example because I mean their shop national is so extremely large. I mean they have one for the Amazon biome and one from the serato and and both of these areas are like bigger than many countries. And I think actually inside the I could imagine with it because I know for example how they do it they have like a carbon map for the Amazon biome and and so different areas of the Amazon have different carbon content per hectare and I think this somehow also reflect that there are different forest types inside the Amazon. Maybe we will all call it tropical rainforest but then I'm sure if you are more into botany or different things you maybe have would call it different things because some is a little more right than others are some is on on mountains and some is nuts and and some is flooded part of the year and others are not flooded. So even with that I would assume they have different forest types inside that huge area. I think for the others. I mean, we will get to some examples maybe it's easier like that. So also in the decision it says that countries should include the most relevant activities which are the activities where you have the higher emissions they should be included. And what you have what we see is that most I think all submission except one include in maybe that's next generation but close to that includes emissions reducing emissions from deforestation. Then we have also seen more and more with including emission reducing emissions from forest degradation and we have seen more including enhancement of forest carbon stocks and then slightly less with the sustainable management of forest and with the conservation of forest carbon stocks. One reason why countries are excluding particular activities is at least in the beginning was, of course, because it was not maybe the most relevant, but it was also sometimes basically they said we don't have the data. So now we introduced the one we can and then the others will come later. And I think this is very much in line with the stepwise approach what countries can do. And what we've seen till is also an interesting examples because they made for different reference levels or they call two of them if I yell and then to f l inside the same submission we have a number of countries like I put the example of Vietnam that that separate they have f l for the emissions and then they have an f l for the removals. So they sort of separate emissions and removals, whether you actually and that's another point whether you call it f f l or f l has this has not really been defined in any decisions. And we don't see 100% consistency between how countries are doing it, but it doesn't mean that's not so important. And this is of course that what they do in the submission with the f l is also what they do when they submit results later in the technical annex that the country maintains a consistency for themselves and with their own submission. This is what what is important, not that there's a global definition of this. So, so we in particular in Asia actually we have quite a number of countries that made this like Vietnam where they have one for reducing emissions and then they have one for enhancing carbon removals basically. And that raises Chile and Vietnam and all these others, but not in the case of Brazil, but they do it in a in a single submission Brazil made separate submissions one for the Amazon and one for Serato. And that also meant later when they submitted results because they have submitted results both from the Amazon and the Serato, they also make it into different technical annexes. And it also means that the secretariat, we will do a technical or we will not the rules have experts will do a technical assessment of of each of these submissions, while in case of Chile and Vietnam. It's the same to technical rules have experts that will do the technical assessment of all these files because it's in one submission. So, countries are free in to submit actually there's no sort of limit to submission and we see number of countries have I mean, France. Here you have Chile, Brazil, Vietnam, but we, there's not really any limitation to that. And I think the more you a country fells are submitting, they might create some, I mean, might be more complicated in the end you need to be able to report based on how what you have chosen based on the activities based on the force types and everything and of course, in terms of being rational, it very often maybe if you have a national forced inventory, you don't have a national forced inventory, maybe just for one force type, if you have it exactly national for all your force and, and in this that would be a number of reasons why you can make it a little bit complicated for yourself. I don't know what is the experience with Chile because it was a quite also interesting case where they had these different areas of the country and different files and FRIL and FRILs for different areas for different activities. Other countries generally did not do like that they more or less did for the whole country and then they just more split depending on here we have, you could say F4 station, which was often what they would consider the enhancement of forced capital stocks and here we have the degradation and deforestation which would then maybe be the remaining force. This about whether the aggregated, yeah so I said you can what we see many countries aggregate but not all so this again important in the decision is that your country should do the most important pools and activities and and again this if a country is sort of saying okay we will not include the soil carbon, then they will normally include some rationale in the submission saying we don't consider soil carbon is changing that much under our conditions, but there's also some cases where they will say, basically we have no data. And as part of the stepwise approach, this is really, we will, we have some ideas to how this can be improved, but this will happen only at later states. So this is something in the technical assessment report, the experts will note this and they will also say that this seems very this they can understand that, or they can say that this isn't they identify an area for future improvement. This is what is happening in many reports. And so the self standing red plus are integrating in for blue carbon to be part of a plus or self standing. I mean, first of all, now we have this more so framework for but plus it took, I would say more than 10 years to negotiate and and and now it is working and if you sort of think about a separate framework for blue carbon, then it does not exist right now of course parties can always propose things to the cop a new agenda item but could also take some time and of course other parties have to agree that this will be an agenda item and so on so it's not so easy, I would say it would be easier and faster if whatever you do in the mangroves would also be part of what you do sort of the red plus, at least that's, that's my view. And, and here we say one monitor system yeah this because also, of course reasons of course. Again, we have also the, in the decisions about how to make a full CP 17, where countries or parties should submit information on the rationale of what of the film, including details and national circumstances and if adjust adjustment. I think this is what is what is also meant here so some parties that this is in particular the case where we have high force loaded for station countries where you could say the reference level they have they have actually been conserving the force really well and they have a reference level sort of based on historic data only that gives very small levels of emissions and therefore it is a bit difficult for them actually to improve very much and, and there was an opening for doing this kind of adjustment. Again, here with one thing I should mention I'll mention that later. I mean, the decisions taken under the UNFCCC is about the red plus the reference level the technical assessment of reference level. The, the secretary, I mean you have to see are not providing any result based payments. I mean the idea, of course, is you have results. And then we also have decisions actually mentioning result based payments but then we are calling for financing entities or parting and one of them is the Green Climate Fund. And if you have been involved in their work, you will already know that they introduced like a scorecard. And here they built very much on the UNFCCC decision, but they also added some extra things, because I guess the board of this we are not involved in that but this is the decision of the board of the Green Climate Fund, introduce some extra things and, and in, in, in your case, if I'm a country and thinking about result based payment. Then of course, it's, you would want to also consider who would provide this result based payments because even if I would say the decisions under the UNFCCC have this notion of stepwise and, and, and actually to accommodate national circumstances very much, then it's not necessarily always the case to the same degree at least that this is true also for the financing entities. Yeah, so, yeah, again, you can countries can basically when countries decide what activities they have. I think what is important is, I mean, first, actually, we were thinking it's important not to include the same area under the two activities but I think we see that sometimes but I think really what is important is how you define your activities, because you want to be able to track your emissions and remove it from the different activities, so they don't count, you could say more than one time and that's in particular, of course, if you have separate wells, if you have one single well, then it sort of sums up and then maybe you don't have the same kind of problem. Right now, for example, we have a submission from put on. They have selected the activity conservation of forced carbon stock to happen in what they have sort of titled as conservation areas, and then they have other forest areas and this they have the activity sustainable management of forest. So, so they track these two differently. And, and in the end, they sort of sum it up and there's one single fellow value. One thing is, of course, and maybe this is also behind this, when you think about carbon is in case of put on let's say they have very positive results from conservation of force carbon stocks, but they don't have very positive results for the sustainable management of forest. In this case, of course, that could be the unfortunate situation that it's not really sort of the sum is not providing a result. Well, another very good result. And, but then again, this was also at the time of negotiations, one of the ideas of moving to the national to ensure that because what if there is some kind of displacement, maybe some activities from the conservation has moved to the other one. And so I mean now I'm just speculating. But this is one of the reasons for having one value for the for the whole country. Peter, before you move to the next slide. I just want to give a bit of context of this previous two slides that you've been very nicely discussing and offering very useful examples. The situation in the region comes with countries having the mangroves already reported within their bread plus frails. And then the question is, what would have to happen if they wanted to have their self standing blue carbon out of this world and creating this one friend within red always. I think it is very clear that it has to be it can be a separated effort all or if they're all, but it has to be within the red plus admission so basically the first slides were just showing that even though countries have now their frails submitted. They still can reconsider whether the promotion of blue carbon is worth the effort of us what we will see in the next steps what would be the then the step forwards to move the mangroves and the selected activities out of their current submission so basically this first slides are just to show that even though some countries have aggregated mitigation commitments on the red with all forest types and even all the red plus activities this is not the only way that this could go forward that there are other examples and countries have freedom to choose and considering everything that you mentioned right that there is consistency in the definitions consistency in the areas and that these submit within one monitoring system and so on. But basically these first slides were just to show the possibility of different possibilities that other countries are also thinking about yeah thank you so much. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, this. I think this in the question here was also related to the greenhouse gas inventories and of course here for developing countries the situation is that I think you are still able to use the 1996 update. I think countries have started to use the 2006 guidelines where you have a totally well a different structure. This is also the structure that will be used in the future but the future is still with the enhanced transparency framework for the past agreement is still a few years I mean I think that you need to start to report there by 2024 but under there you would have these different land use categories and on the Lulusev and here you have forced and what we see here now are more referring to what we've seen some for some countries is that they have different rows simply for different force types because this would this makes sense for them because maybe the emission factors maybe the I mean a big country like Canada for example would have the different regions one row for that and of course this is also possible. In the case that you want a separate row for for the mangroves and there you will clearly be able to show also. What is the sort of emissions removals from, from that. I wouldn't call it category because for that row or whatever I mean for for that force type side. You will be able to see that if you do it like that. And what we see for the for the fellow. So, here we, there is, I mean, basically all always in the technical assessment to look if there is, I mean, especially for the when the results come, whether it is consistent with the national greenhouse gas inventory. What we see for the process that many cases actually countries have last time they made a submission with a greenhouse gas inventory was maybe a national communication several years back. So in this case data very often have improved considerably and therefore there's not so much consistency but but actually this is not an issue this is just something that will be checked. As countries would start to report more, then there will be more and more sort of align consistency between the two. Of course, if you have different activities and there are some issues you leave out to leave out of your fellow, but you still have in your greenhouse gas inventory, then there will be some differences and in case for example, the country only have part of the force then there will also be some differences. So, yeah, I think this maybe answer that. So, what for the blue carbon what I understood was that two activities that maybe are more relevant conservation and enhancement of force carbon stocks where the later could mean basically restoration of mangroves. Yeah, this is this is possible again, the five activities you have from the Cancun agreements red plus activities were never really defined. While of course reducing emissions from the forestation yet then there's some different stations but in particular sustainable management of forest enhancement of force carbon stock and conservation of force carbon stock. I think that there could be different interpretation by different countries on how they define these activities and this is not a problem. The only problem is to be clear about it and and be able to report based on that, how you define it. This is this is sort of the important thing. Yes, the target of this is like Peter was to answer some of the questions by the governments because they, they are keen to focus on conservation and restoration action for mangroves instead of focusing on degradation or the forestation for different reasons. I think now it is very clear that they should not meet the forestation and degradation if they are key emission sources so they can have also the sinks but if those two are important they should also include them. And then what we do in the next slide is to offer a few scenarios of what is the starting point of some countries and what would happen if they wanted to choose conservation and enhancement of forest carbon stocks restoration for for self standing blue carbon red plus friends. So basically we will show a few scenarios of countries that like for instance in this case is Brazil that doesn't have any of these two sink activities but they also they don't have mangroves including their current threats so this would be a starting point that would be very different if they want to produce their blue carbon threats and countries maybe like Panama that's their starting point would be all the red plus activities and all the forest types within so we will just show a few scenarios and a few ideas as we always say this is not prescriptive. A few ideas of what countries could start considering for moving forward towards this self standing blue carbon within the red plus mission. Thank you. Okay, so yeah. So yeah, here I guess the we mentioned showing them has a fellow for all for us types for the forestation and forest degradation so this also include the mangroves and includes all the rest of the of the forest if the idea here that showing them also want to include a fellow for the other two activities conservation enhancement of forest carbon stock for the mangroves in this case. Yeah, they will submit a new friend and I would say they would not only I mean they have to be able to clearly define the new activities and the areas they are included for and and I would say it would make sense to as long as you can define what you are doing and it's very clear it can be quite complicated in a way it would be maybe easier to have a separate for them for the mangroves and a separate for the rest of the forest but I'm not sure this is necessary in all cases. I guess you can define your activities very much what you are doing and then you can have these additional activities only for mangroves. But then of course, if one of the ideas and is that you want separate results for for the mangroves and you have still all your forest in there it's also about whether I mean whether you do this about adding up the different for us or whether you actually present them as separate for us. This is also one thing to consider. I think also let me jump in for a very important question I think in the case of enhancement of forest carbon stock which would be an increase of carbon stocks. Some of the areas that currently are reported for degradation would overlap with some of these enhancement of forest carbon stocks right so in this case where there is a clear overlapping either by creating a definition of enhancement of forest carbon stocks that omits the area of degradation or if you still want to incorporate the area that is degraded within the enhancement of forest carbon stocks then I think then you would have to re-estimate and resume your original frills right and again this is not prescriptive this is we you are not an entity to offer methodologies it's just a bit of enlightenment of what are the complications thank you Peter. Yeah I think you're right that I mean in case you are in basically restoring the mangroves and this is also counting towards in a separate frill to the degradation then you can say you have one activities that and you remove for every ton of of CO2 you are removing then it's somehow counting towards results in two different files I think definitely there will be some some issue on that so you have to show that this is not happening. And one easy way of course is to avoid to not have the overlapping of the areas and another way would maybe we'll have to add the two together and yeah. Yeah great Peter that's great so this also differs with Berra I think Amy was mentioning that in the case of the voluntary carbon you can have both sequestration and avoid it if I understood correctly I will let Amy answer that question at the end thank you Peter. And again what is the difference between. Yeah I think this is more or less the same to and I mean showing I made the submission I think two years ago and and of course they are always welcome to make a new one and and then when they do make a new one that's if and they will do something like here. Create a friend from mangroves for the for all activities and another friend. For the rest of the forest for example yeah one thing when they make an exclamation of process that's part of the decisions also you have to explain what is the difference between the previous one and yeah this I mean there's nothing that prevented. But what you have to always be clear about what you're doing. Sorry. For this scenario to be this is actually quite an interesting case example because they would have mangroves within all forest types in the first submission and if it's emissions they could leave it there together with all the forest types and then create one a specific for mangroves for the scenes right so for conservation and enhancement forest carbon stocks. But then they would have their blue carbon separated and merge with other forest types for the emissions while specifically for mangroves for the for the for the scene so. The other option would be that they also take out the emissions of the mangroves as a separated for all for the mangroves so again we are we are just showing how complicated. Yeah they are quite complicated and and I think really you need to sit down and and sort of consider how how this can work and how you are not sort of. I mean counting the same ton of carbon towards different friends at the same time because obviously this I think would not work. Yeah perfect thanks very much yeah. And here we have another one to this maybe for Panama so Panama was actually selected all five activities and all the forest types as far as I remember and. And. Yeah and. If they want to since they already have all activities they can hardly well they cannot add any activities so if they want to do something different split it up I think it would consider. Sort of a step backwards because it's sort of going against the direction that that sort of the decisions are pointing towards that we should include all and all like all significant activities. But of course if a country would make the submission I mean. There's nothing in the system saying you cannot do it and the there'll be a technical assessment and they will of course also. Ask this and they will say for maybe they will say as for future improvement maybe it's better to have go to the national and have all the activities and so so Panama will be in a bit funny situation if they would go against that. Yeah, I think that's all I can say. Say for this. But I mean there's not we don't have decisions that say this is not possible. Yes, perfect. Thanks. And okay and now this is. What I think what I was trying to say before that. We are not as a secretary providing any result based payments and again of course then there's the volunteer but this is a whole different. All game I would say what what we have right now is at least we have this green climate fund which is a pilot only and of course the pilot will I guess they will have to take some decisions about to continue that or to change that or what they will do and and I will not be able to answer any questions and how what this will result in but I know they have a scorecard and I know they will in some cases they this scorecard they have what they call pass and fail in some cases and they have in some cases they have whether they give you one or two or three I think depending on on how well it fits to what the scorecard is looking for and then basically in the end they provide the result based payments not only are based on the tons of emission reduction of the moves but also based on the result of the scorecard and this is of course also important to look at if this is what the party is looking for. I think you can go to the we've discussed this once maybe you can go to the to the ones and NDCs and final ones thank you so much. NDCs okay yeah so basically NDCs are as the title national determined contributions national determined and countries can actually do I mean there's a lot of freedom. And what parties have agreed is that for every new NDCs that are submitted it should be more ambitious that the previous. So this is one point to remember another point is to remember that based on the decisions taken in Katowice there was a decision for CMA one where they there's an annex providing information that parties should provide to what they call facilitate clarity transparency on an understanding of the NDC. So he has a and one of the elements for example is countries parties should select indicators for the for the national determined contribution to sort of being able to track the progress towards meeting the NDC. But for sure parties can include red plus they can include yeah that's that's I would say you can get a lot there's a lot of freedom here. Peter let me jump in because I think one of the questions I think this is very important we've heard a lot from the governments in the region that red plus and incorporating red plus in NDCs might not be allowed so we are here saying that from a reporting perspective there is no there is no problem incorporating the red there there's no no problem maybe and maybe we come to that another slide. Because you can put in the NDCs and you will for the web plus but then there's also this issue of double counting. And of course let's say a country with reduced emissions by a million tonne and somehow now we don't know how this there's a ongoing negotiations under what is called article six where there's three different sort of agenda items I will have a slide on that. And let's say Germany for example will buy all these emissions reduction from a country because Germany and the rules are so this is possible that there's a lot of assumptions here. So then Germany will use it to meet their NDC and then of course if the country have already included in their own NDC then that they would also then there could be some issue. The problem is for me right now is that it's really very very difficult to give any advice here because we don't have the rules for how this will work. And but but for sure when they mentioned double counting then they as at a minimum are thinking about it should not count towards meeting NDCs in two different countries at the same time. So this could be one issue but then of course there's also other considerations and again this is part of this negotiations. I don't know where it's going to go but is that maybe a country or party cannot you could say sell any emission reduction unless they have this activity also in the NDC. So it's yeah it's very poor advice I give here because I'm just saying there's a lot of uncertainty and I'm not able to answer that because we really don't know yet. Peter but this is extremely important because that was also one of the confusions that we saw in the in the work in the original work workshop last year. So this last point that you touch on if the NDC is to not cover the activities then funding could not be included. And in the case and as you said this is not decided. Yeah so no one really knows what would be the regulation. But I think one of the problems also for incorporating Red Classic to NDCs is the situation of receiving funding from NDC international support and then receiving funding for performance based of their forest mitigation action. So and again this could be some issues that might be able to be solved when the article six negotiations move forward. But my point here is then technically from a reporting point of view they can be included Red Plus targets can be included in NDCs. That seems something that it's aligned with what you were saying. But then there are all these caveats right. So yeah. Yeah I mean right now for example we know that what this is for the pilot of the Red Plus result based payment and and and that will maybe look different when we are past 2000 and well we are in 2020 now. But the results they're paying for right now is more from 1415 16 I think they are I think they bring climate fund made it clear that they will not claim the emission reductions but this the country can use that to meet their own whatever target. But of course this would be a target for before 2020. So it's not really so relevant for the NDCs that countries maybe want to make now. And and this is for the for the green climate fund. I assume it could be quite different if it was a country that would pay for the results unless. Yeah, I don't know to be honest how it how it will work. Yeah, perfect. Thank you. Thank you very much. And of course when we talk about red plus into NDCs we talk about blue carbon into NDCs as well. So it's a discussion. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. So this is actually yeah this is about the first of all the article six. So here actually we have these three months we have a 6.2 article 62 was a cooperative approaches. Again, since there's no agreement on any of these, then it's very difficult to characterize them. But maybe 62 is more between countries. But I'm not sure there's even agreement about that. Then 64. It's called mechanism. Some would say this is sort of the new CDM but different. I'm sure. But this is a kind of more project type of base. But again, this is not and then finally there's some 168 non-market based approaches. Of course, one of the big things that have been discussed and as you might remember, there was supposed to be an agreement about this. In Katowice at COP 26. Now we are going to next time next year to COP 24. But now next time we go to 26. So also in Madrid at COP 25 parties were not able to agree. So this very difficult negotiations. And here I just mentioned some of the issues of course how to track and avoid double counting. This is was a big issue. They use a term called corresponding adjustments. I don't think there's really too much. This is discussed a lot. They have discussion about how to account that countries have different indices. I mean, some will have an NDC that is, you could say a point target where this we will reduce emissions by 15% by 2030. But others will have an attack it for every year to watch 2030 how to compare these kind of things. If you start to transfer the, the, for the six to at least they have this title international transferable mitigation outcomes. It TMOs. Here they also discussed who can use these there's different views on that as well. Of course, there's also, and there was what kind of activities can be included. Yeah, again, there was also, yeah, I mean, there was different interpretations. I think in the of use of interpretations. There was different views on what to do with sort of existing credits from older activities. This could be like from the CDM or joint implementation protocol. What, how will they be able to be used in the future. If at all, or is the limitation to that that was a very difficult question. There are the other issues that, of course, whatever you do should be real additional measurable permanence is an issue. Providence, I think this is more very much related to the mechanism, for example, share proceeds. This is also a discussion. I mean, maybe you know that for the CDM as a shared proceeds that go to the adaptation fund. There's a similar issue discussed here and what should the size be. And, yeah, there are so many elements and, and in Katowice, the presidency engaged in the final days on this and still we had no outcome in Madrid. It was the same issue. And, of course, we all hope there will be clarity at the next cup, but it is a very difficult topic. And, yeah, and that's simply just the situation. And therefore it's impossible for me to say that it's most likely going to end like that or that because really I don't know, and I don't think anyone would want to guess. Well, maybe someone, but I think as a secretary, at least we should not guess on that because we don't know. Absolutely, Peter, I think all these issues of double counting and payments and then how to do or to track for this voluntary market with UNFCCC and it's still, as you are very clearly mentioned here, not yet defined countries need to agree on that. So it is yet unclear how that will go. Peter, I cannot thank you enough for this wonderful presentation. I think you really clarified a lot of doubts. If you, if you had some more patience for 10 minutes questions, that would be fabulous. We've opened the floor to the governments in the region. Yeah, yeah, no, that's fine. Great. Isabel, would you kindly open the chance for final questions. Thank you again, Peter. So maybe I don't need to stop share the screen maybe. Yeah, perfect. Okay, let's start. Let's just start with Colombia. So they mentioned that in their definition of natural forests, they include trees of a five meter height, 30% of crown canopy. And that includes only partially the mangroves. And this is the same situation in Mexico with their dwarf mangroves. He says, we want to include other mangroves as coastal wetlands in our inventories of carbon, but also make a zoom on the contribution of mangroves defined as natural forest under soils. How do you suggest dealing with this? This is the first question. Yeah, I think it depends what you mean to make a zoom because if you remember the example from Bhutan, so they, how they will report, they will both report on these protected areas where they have conservation and they will report on the other forest. And I think actually they also have the oil, I know they also have the enhancement of force carbon stuff. They will be all of this will be in there also when the report results. In the end, of course, they will add the different numbers and there will only be one result. Well, in two results because they have one for removals and one for emissions. But, but all the removals will be in one only. But sort of you could say in the report, it will still be very clear how much is coming from the different forest types and from the different activities. So it depends who you want to have it reflected like you could say this is our results from here and this or you want to I mean in the technical assess analysis of results from Bhutan when hopefully they will have some results in the future. The technical assessment will focus on all the different activities and the different force types. So, so it will be clear for Bhutan and for anyone that meets the report how much is from the different activities and these different force types. Yes. So, so basically Peter, if they wanted to have a specific definition for for mangroves, they, they are allowed to have a specific definition of mangroves with different thresholds and they are using for other forest types. So there is no, if they specify that they need a different definition for mangroves, would you see a problem there? I mean that if the definition also fits, I mean the other, I mean, the cases we have had basically has been that the definitions did not fit very well with mangroves because basically the mangroves were not tall enough to sort of meet the trust threshold. And therefore, countries said, we will be for these mangroves, we made an exception to the threshold because we want to include them. Exactly. Yeah. I think this answer the question. Then from Surinam. So Surinam is asking if they understood correctly Surinam could report on blue carbon under the red plus activities of conservation and enhancement in separate fells for us. But should exclude mangrove from previous fell reporting. That's the first question. Let me ask you the question again. So basically Surinam has all forest types for the forestation and for the relation relating to logging. And then they asking if they want to report on conservation and enhancement of forest carbon stop in a separate fell. They should exclude it from the current fell reporting. I think if the new activity, again, this is you have to fit. If the new activities they want to do are contributing to results. Both. I mean, if they want to have two different falls and it's contributing to results in two different falls, then there's a problem with including the area in both I would say, in this case, I would not want to have the air. But, yeah. And that of course you mean you need to change your previous fall submission as well. Yes, I think the question also. I think Surinam, Consuela, the topic here is that for conservation for their enhancement of forest carbon stock, it may overlap over areas that you are currently reporting as mangrove degradation. The areas that you are reporting as degradation, they may improve carbon and therefore they also would be into the red plus activity of enhancement of forest carbon stock. And therefore, there you have a problem if you want to have a blue carbon that is focusing only on the sinks because it's overlapping areas. So one possible possible there may be other ways. The way of doing this is if you want to have like only like sink contribution for the areas that overlap, you should decide either you leave it under degradation or you leave it under the enhancement of forest carbon stock. If you decide to move the area degraded towards this new activity, then yes, you have to re-estimate and resubmit your frail. But if you decide to use an area of sink that you don't overlap with your current submission, then you leave the current submission as it is. And you create then a frail, a frail positive for the activities that you are willing to work on that just doesn't overlay with the current submission. So basically this is one option, right, Peter? Yeah, but I would assume that for the new, I mean, the Rulusev experts that make the technical assessment would probably still have this identify for future improvement that actually there would be one single frail for the country. Instead of having a number of frails because this number of frails, there's always this risk of displacement and things that makes it more complicated compared to if you have everything under one. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, creating a self-estanding blue carbon would be necessary if you are aiming for payments for results exclusively for mangroves, but it does complicate a lot the reporting and the monitoring and so on. So we have another question from Peru. It says, is it possible for a government regarding its NDCs to demonstrate additionality by just protecting mangroves? For example, by showing forecasts for substantially, by showing that without a policy for protection, these mangroves would be degraded. Another question goes, can you only have conservation of mangroves as one activity within the NDCs by showing additionality? Yeah, I mean, now I understand the question so that this is not necessarily following Red Plus, but this is sort of outside Red Plus. And in this case, I guess what you do in your NDCs is, yeah, I mean, if you are following the Red Plus, then you will have a reference level and then your additionality, you could say we don't really use that term, but then you will basically have results compared to the reference level. And this is, I guess if you don't get to volunteer carbon market, what we would then say this is the additionality that is beyond, but we just don't use that term. But if it's outside the Red Plus, I don't know, I guess you would have to select some indicator and then it's not really governed by the Red Plus decisions. I don't know, these indicators what they could be in this case, but maybe there's, this is something the party have some idea that, yeah, really this is quite hypothetically question this little bit difficult answer. Yes, I agree. I think it's not exactly clear what he was mentioning. Then, yeah, again, the topic of additionality appears a lot. And I think you were mentioning that this concept doesn't really exist under the UNFCCC because we have a question from TNC saying for NDCs, do you need to demonstrate additionality like CDM or voluntary carbon projects. And I think this has to also, yeah, maybe you can. You have your reference level basically. And in the majority of cases the reference level is the sort of the average of historic emissions over a period before. And then the country make the kind of assumption that, you know, this is what will continue in the future. And if we do whatever we do better than this, then we have some results and this is basically just mentioned measured in tons of carbon per year. And of course, these results could also be because let's say the soy prices went really down and normally it was because of conversion into shire production that we had the deforestation. And, and this is not, I mean, we don't have, I think for voluntary carbon money, you have very much to link it to specific interventions like here we do a management plan and we, we, yeah, we manage the force in a particular way and we can more or less, unless something is wrong for see what the results will be. Of course, for red plus you also have a national strategy, and you do different activities, but in the end, you have many factors that impact your forest. And some of them could be positive, but some of them, unfortunately are sometimes also negative. And, and, and I think there's much more sort of linking results to specific intervention in the voluntary carbon market, compared to if you have this reference for the whole country, for example. Yes, yes, thank you, Peter. And then we have a last question. This has already been answered, but maybe you could remind us. Well, another from Surina, I'm sorry. Other examples were country include blue carbon in the greenhouse gas inventories for national communication under affolux and we know the answer to that. If I understood it clearly the answer was yes it can be included as a category on the forest land in the greenhouse gas inventory for national communications under affolux. Yeah, well, first I would clarify that it is, of course, under the IPCC, we have this affolux chapter. But how it, at least in the greenhouse gas inventories, the parties have agreed that we report Lulusev in one second or sorry, we report Lulusev in one sector and we report agriculture in one sector. So there's sometimes a little bit confusing when we mentioned affolux. Yeah, under the Lulusev, yeah, then we have these six land use categories forest land, crop land, grassland, wetlands, settlements and other lands. And then again subcategories and so on for forest land converted to crop land, et cetera, et cetera. But when you report here, yeah, then, for example, there's, we can say a table where you would normally report what we call forest land, remaining forest land. And here we would, you could then have a row saying that, okay, this is our pine forest, another row, well, maybe not. Well, let me say for Canada would have maybe one, this is British Columbia, this is Alberta, this is, I mean, some, I mean, there's different ways how you can do it. But it will basically just enhance transparency, instead of saying that everything is under one, because the calculation you will have to do behind in order to sort of complete the numbers for this greenhouse gas inventory would probably anyway include some Excel spreadsheets with sort of the contribution from the different forest type and, and you might as well put more of that information in the greenhouse gas inventory itself, because this will basically just enhance transparency. Yes, Peter, let me, let me actually maybe follow up on that question. Consuelo, in the current moment, the only country that is reporting blue carbon within their greenhouse gas inventories is Australia. And we will have Australia in the next session to explain us what were their lessons learned from cooperating. They're not only mangroves, they also have seagrass. So in a country like, like Suriname, as Peter was saying, within the reporting Lulu CF, if you choose your mangroves to be forests, then under the section of forest, you create a category that would be mangroves. And there you will report the mangrove missions, either in forest land remaining forest land or in other land uses that become forests. So there are all these three possibilities, right? I think for non annex one countries, it's been difficult to visualize these common reporting format tables because they are not requested to report on that. But basically, Consuelo, either if you define them as wetlands, you would incorporate them as wetlands. If you define them as forest, you would put them on forest and then you would choose whether it's forests that remain forests. So conservation or enhancement of forest carbon stocks activities would be within this forest land remaining forest land or wetland remaining wetland if you have defined your mangroves as wetlands. And then the other reporting tables, which would be forests that go into the other categories through the forestation, then if you have the forestation of mangroves, you could also create a specific line for mangroves that are the forested and then incorporate their greenhouse gas emissions. So the answer is yes, you can and you should if you want to have a self standing blue carbon within your greenhouse gas inventories, separate and track. And that's what Peter was saying. The most important thing is that you track in a consistent manner. And also that if you now separate it and before you didn't, you make sure that then there is consistency in the time series so that you don't start adding changes in areas or changes that would make the time series not consistent. And if there are changes that are important, then you also need to resume your early admission. So the entire time series is consistent. But the answer is yes, right. Peter, is that correct? Yeah. Okay, very question and we close and thank you kindly for this. As I said, this is something that already asked about Oh, here she is. Elisa is asking if there is any kind of regulation for countries that have included blue carbon into their NDCs or their frets on how to deal with voluntary markets and their double counting. I think you mentioned that already very clearly with the article six, but maybe you could elaborate. Yeah, this is a complicated because, I mean, based on the history with a cuter protocol, at least, there was not really, I mean, what happened on a cuter protocol, there's no recognition of what is happening volunteer carbon market. So in fact, you could have a double counting there because basically parties did not really care about that. Of course, now I think the Paris Agreement, it becomes more complicated because all parties actually will have an NDC. And therefore, there will be some contribution from all parties. Again, the role of the voluntary carbon market again could be, I mean, depending if under, for example, the article 6.4, what kind of activities would be voluntary, maybe parties would agree that this particular kind of activities that have these standards from this voluntary carbon standards will be accepted under the Paris Agreement. Then it's a kind of different situation again. But of course, we don't know that yet. And so it's a bit uncertain. Thank you, Peter. I think we have to thank you warmly and kindly because it's very late for you there in Germany and you came from a very busy day. So thanks so much for your participation. I personally really enjoy the examples and the situations of different countries that could illustrate potential pathways for Latin America and the Caribbean. So thank you warmly. We're going to close the session now. And the only thing is, we will send you emails with the presentation so that you can read them more quietly and kind of digest the very large amount of information that has been given here. Just as a warning, as you can see, there is this now new trend of talking about blue carpets and NPCs and we all love it. I think saving our mangroves is what we all have in our heads, right? We do need to protect coastal forest, which right now are absolutely abandoned. But the complexities of doing that are also large. So they're not impossible, but countries need to have a very clear vision of why they're doing it and what are the benefits of doing it within the UNFCCC versus VERA. And what are the national policies and targets without any considerations of the UNFCCC and the VERA market? So what is the ecosystem protection that countries want to offer this coastal forest without necessarily thinking on the frameworks of climate change, but also in the framework of UNFCCD or all the other other type of international ramps or agreements and so on. So there is not only one framework within mangroves are important. It's also important to think that countries do have to have their own policies and no regulations. So we will share the slides with links and then we will let you know when the second session of this webinar comes real, which would be the week on the 20th of July, we will have the Government of Australia explain us their lessons learned from having the self-standing reporting of blue carbon within their national greenhouse gas communications. And then we would have someone from the Green Climate Fund and the Global Environmental Fund to talk about unlocking sources of finance of blue carbon. And then Suriname Government very kindly also actually Guyana, sorry, very kindly will share some experiences of their submissions of mangrove related projects in these two financing bodies. So thanks very much to all the speakers, particularly Peter, very late there in Germany and Amy, thanks so much. And we will be in touch with all of you. Thanks very much for participating. Thank you. Thank you very much. Have a good day.