 When it comes to keeping greenhouse gases under wraps, the world's wetlands punch well above their weight. Petlands, for example, store more carbon than all other vegetation types combined and mangroves can sequester more than four times as much carbon as tropical forests. When they're destroyed or degraded, that carbon escapes into the atmosphere accelerating climate change. So it makes sense from a climate perspective to protect and restore as much of our planet's wetlands as possible. But there's still little research on wetlands and their emission stashing capacities compared to many other forest ecosystems. That means they often don't get the attention they deserve, including in countries emission reduction plants that form part of the Paris Agreement on climate change. We're working to provide a more accurate picture of wetlands contribution. One way of doing that is by improving forest reference emission levels or FREL. Forest reference emission level provides a benchmark to determine how successful or unsuccessful a project is. When project activities are implemented to reduce emissions are compared with the business as usual scenario. Developing countries that participate in the UN's framework for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation or REDD plus as part of their nationally determined contributions to the Paris Agreement have to develop their own FREL benchmarks which assess REDD plus performance by providing a quantitative way to measure emissions reductions and removals. Countries can choose to take a step-wise approach to developing their reference levels which allows them to improve them by incorporating better data and methodologies over time. Since 2019, C4 has been conducting research on improving the transparency, accuracy, completeness, consistency and comparability of FREL particularly in wetland ecosystems. We've made it easier for countries to include important emission sources like peatland fires, emissions of non-carbon dioxide gases from drained peatlands and oxidation of mangrove soil. We've also helped them to account for new emission sinks such as regeneration and natural expansion of mangroves and below-grown carbon in mangrove forests. We've developed more sophisticated uncertainty assessments and integrated new and diverse forms of data generation to measure changes in forest carbon more comprehensively and accurately. We hope to help communities, councils and countries to make the best informed choices possible to protect our planet from the worst impacts of climate change while preserving the world's wetlands for people and nature and for present and future generations.