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Emergent Forest Finance Accelerator is the lead partner of the Green Gigaton Challenge. Our team is a collection of finance and policy experts, all galvanized by the opportunity to create real transformational change by developing and bringing-to-market practical, credible and highly ambitious forest protection solutions.

The UN-REDD Programme is the flagship UN knowledge and advisory programme on forests and climate, building on the convening role and technical expertise of FAO, UNDP and UNEP with a focus on advancing Articles 5 and 6 of the Paris Agreement. It is the largest international provider of REDD+ assistance, helping its 65 partner countries protect their forests and achieve their climate goals. UN-REDD countries have submitted more than 700 million tCO2 of forest emissions reductions to the UNFCCC.

Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) is one of the world's leading environmental organization. EDF's key priorities are making impact differences in stabilizing the climate to secure a healthy future, rebuilding a greener economy, and making communities more resilient to climate change.

Forest Trends is a non-profit organization that protects critical ecosystems through creative environmental finance, markets, supply chains, and other incentive mechanisms for conservation to promote healthy forests, sustainable agriculture, clean water, robust climate action, protected biodiversity, and strong communities.

The Architecture for REDD+ Transactions (ART) is a voluntary international initiative that seeks to reward countries for reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. ART offers a rigorous standard and comprehensive process to transparently register, verify and issue REDD+ emission reductions credits that embody high environmental and social integrity.

The Green Gigaton Challenge is a new global effort to catalyse funds to transact one gigaton of high-quality emissions reductions from forest-based natural climate solutions by 2025 and annually after that as an aspirational goal. The Challenge brings together a coalition of public, private and philanthropic partners on a scale never seen before to channel funds into efforts led by national and subnational governments to arrest deforestation, while helping companies complement, and not substitute, their internal emissions reductions with the purchase of high-integrity carbon credits. The initiative was launched by a strategic group of partners working to support forest countries in their effort to achieve and go beyond their Paris Agreement nationally-determined contributions by reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+).

So just how ambitious is this target? One gigaton of annual emissions reductions is equivalent to taking 80% of the cars off American roads. Global climate cooperation can enable double the emissions reductions under current Paris pledges for the same cost as countries acting alone, and REDD+ represents the greatest single part of this opportunity. One gigaton per year could enable about twice as many reductions at the same global cost compared to implementing current Paris pledges without international collaboration on REDD+. Together, we can meet this challenge and make a real difference in the fight against climate change.

See our primer for more information.

Forests protection is an essential component of climate action, yet is overlooked and underfunded.

There is NO solution to the climate or biodiversity crises without ending deforestation. Only by working with national and state governments, and by channeling private capital, can we make massive and transformative reductions in deforestation.

We can deliver some of the most cost-effective climate solutions by investing in tropical forests through jurisdictional programs to reduce tropical deforestation, working across entire countries or states. Forests provide invaluable benefits for nature and people such as biodiversity conservation, water regulation, and adaptations to climate change.

The Green Gigaton Challenge is a climate strategy to enable forest protection at scale.

By mobilizing public and private results-based finance, the Green Gigaton Challenge will build the visible demand signal needed to unlock the supply pipeline of high-integrity jurisdictional REDD+ emissions reductions. We are coalition led by Emergent Forest Finance Accelerator, UN-REDD, the Architecture for REDD+ Transactions, Forest Trends, and the Environmental Defense Fund.

These credits will capture the true value of forests, establishing the future benchmark for forest protection while building on two decades of investment in REDD+. These credits are fully aligned with the global policy framework, the objectives of the UN and the Paris Agreement.

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Why is the Green Gigaton Challenge important?

How will the partners support the Challenge?

The Green Gigaton Challenge aims to break the stalemate of needing a significant scale up of climate ambition between now and 2030. By achieving one gigaton a year of emission reductions, it will make a significant contribution to cost-effectively implementing Paris pledges and scaling up global ambition to keep global warming below 2°C. Starting in 2020 with the release of The REDD+ Environmental Excellency Standard (TREES), the Challenge is building toward the one gigaton annual goal, to meet it by 2025.

Emergent will work with private companies to structure large-scale transactions of high-quality emission reductions and removals (registered with ART) while UN-REDD will work with forest countries to build their capacity to produce such credits. They will also help companies include forests in their mitigation strategies. EDF, Forest Trends, and ART will contribute their significant technical expertise on REDD+, together catalyzing the finance and partnerships needed to accelerate forest conservation and restoration.