Land Administration Systems for Climate Change Mitigation Payments: Background paper prepared for the Expert Meeting on land tenure issues for implementing climate change mitigation policies in the AFOLU sectors

Payments for environmental services (PES) provide incentives for land users to engage in sustainable land management practices that sequester carbon, and to compensate them for the positive externalities. Carbon sequestration can lead to carbon offsets in government instituted markets and Voluntary Carbon Markets (VCM), or through the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD), and REDD+ projects. To date there have been only a small number of Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects, with large projects tending to be set up under the more recent REDD and REDD+ frameworks. A larger percentage of the existing projects have been set up under VCM mechanisms and standards. This paper describes the importance of recording and recognizing de facto land rights, the risks of ignoring these rights, while acknowledging the complexity and difficulty of incorporating this understanding into the REDD+ or VCM project design. Climate change mitigation projects will need to address these issues and is likely that there will be more integration of land administration processes in monitoring, assessment and verification of projects. However, this will require improved spatial data infrastructures, the development of data standards and improved data storage, and capacity building in many government agencies. Decentralization will help with implementation and consultation with local communities and beneficiaries.