Building trust in forest carbon payments: Learning from the world of financial accounting

This research paper discusses the need to rebuild trust in Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) mechanisms to scale up climate mitigation. It proposes applying guiding principles from financial accounting—such as relevance, faithful representation, and comparability—to REDD+ impact reporting to attract private sector investment and ensure environmental and social robustness.

• Reforestation and the reduction of global deforestation could provide more than one-third of the annual carbon mitigation required to keep global temperature increases below 2°C, as agreed upon by 195 countries under the Paris Agreement.
• Despite early high expectations, REDD+ implementation has faced difficulties that resulted in a lack of trust among stakeholders. This is driven by perceptions that the systems are overly complex, lack environmental and social robustness, and struggle to produce tangible results on the ground, causing private sector actors to withdraw.
• There are three primary current opportunities to scale results-based payments for REDD+: the Paris Agreement's provisions for transferring emissions reductions, the International Civil Aviation Organization's new offset mechanism, and a US$500 million pilot programme for REDD+ results-based payments approved by the Green Climate Fund.
• The paper suggests that REDD+ can build trust by adopting the International Accounting Standards Board’s Conceptual framework for financial reporting, which emphasizes relevance, faithful representation, and comparability. This approach would involve tailoring reporting to end users, increasing data robustness through third-party rating agencies and common uncertainty methodologies, and harmonizing requirements to reduce complexity beyond the Warsaw Framework.

APA

Climate and Development Knowledge Network (2017). Building trust in forest carbon payments: Learning from the world of financial accounting. https://cdkn.org/resource/working-paper-building-trust-in-forest-carbon-payments-learning-from-the-world-of-financial-accounting

Chicago

Climate and Development Knowledge Network. Building trust in forest carbon payments: Learning from the world of financial accounting. 2017. https://cdkn.org/resource/working-paper-building-trust-in-forest-carbon-payments-learning-from-the-world-of-financial-accounting.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Climate and Development Knowledge Network |title=Building trust in forest carbon payments: Learning from the world of financial accounting |date=7 November 2017 |url=https://cdkn.org/resource/working-paper-building-trust-in-forest-carbon-payments-learning-from-the-world-of-financial-accounting |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{climateanddevelopmentknowledgenetwork2017building, author = {{Climate and Development Knowledge Network}}, title = {{Building trust in forest carbon payments: Learning from the world of financial accounting}}, institution = {Climate and Development Knowledge Network}, year = {2017}, month = nov, url = {https://cdkn.org/resource/working-paper-building-trust-in-forest-carbon-payments-learning-from-the-world-of-financial-accounting}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }