Regional Climate Change Program, Central America

The Regional Climate Change Program (RCCP) is a five-year (2013-2018) program funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), led by CATIE. The overarching objectives of this program are to establish and implement carbon-based incentives to decrease emissions from deforestation, forest degradation, and other land uses, and to integrate earth observation information and geospatial technologies into development decision making. The RCCP’s “climate-smart” interventions—which serve a dual purpose of satisfying mitigation and adaptation needs of vulnerable communities—follow a “no regret” philosophy: whether or not an international, legally-binding REDD+ agreement is reached, the innovative policies, enhanced capacities, and targeted interventions developed and implemented by the RCCP to achieve sustainable natural resources management at the landscape scale will be beneficial in and of themselves.

The program operates under two thematic areas: sustainable landscapes, and adaptation. Terra Global's work is encompassed in the sustainable landscapes component, which has the following specific objectives: i) facilitating investments for developing local, national and/or regional carbon-credit marketing proposals; ii) developing cross-scale integrated mitigation interventions to address climate change stressors and vulnerabilities, and; iii) establishing regionally integrated and harmonized REDD+ strategies and protocols, and monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) protocols. Within the sustainable landscapes component, several priority landscapes have been identified: Sico Paulaya (Honduras), Selva Maya (Mexico, Guatemala, Belize), Región Autónoma del Atlántico Norte (Nicaragua), and the Darien (Panama). The Program also has a "blue carbon" component focused on the mangroves of El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica.

Terra RCCP Work

Terra is responsible for leading the finance and markets work under the RCCP. The finance and markets component provides technical expertise to facilitate the implementation of foundational elements to attract finance and to build or participate in emission reduction markets within and between Central American countries and the Dominican Republic.

Terra’s RCCP technical has included the following:

• Technical training on REDD+ national financial and operational planning (Regional)
• Development of a comprehensive national REDD+ financial planning analytical framework (Regional)
• Integration of project level emission reduction activities into national REDD frameworks (Regional)
• Preparation of documentation to access results-based payments from the World Bank Carbon Fund including:
  • Emission reduction PINs (Dominican Republic, Guatemala)
  • Emission Reduction Program Documents (Costa Rica)
  • National REDD+ financial plan (Costa Rica)
  • Country-focused technical assessments of the Carbon Fund ERPA general and economic terms (Guatemala, Costa Rica, Mexico, Peru)
  • Design and development of benefit sharing plans and the supporting institutional arrangements (Guatemala)