Abstract:

Although the measurement of carbon credits is an essential requisite for developing country participants of carbon offset markets, this activity and most especially its accompanying challenges have hardly been documented if at all in the literature. Thus valuable lessons that could be drawn from the carbon project experiences are not available for the guidance of indigenous forest communities undergoing or planning to embark on similar efforts.
In the Philippines, the Kalahan Educational Foundation (KEF) is the first holder of the Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title (CADT) and Peoples Organization (PO) to embark on a carbon sequestration program and to attempt to learn from their experiences in standardizing the necessary processes involved. For this reason, KEF sought funding assistance from the RUPES Program of the World Agroforestry Centre/ICRAF to document and to review its pioneering experiences in measuring existing carbon stocks in the Kalahan Forest Reserve as a prerequisite for participating in the appropriate carbon markets. Their attempts toward setting up a RES mechanism on the ground had largely been guided by self-help and self-learning principles over the past two decades, with minimal external assistance.
The major objectives of the documentation study were as follows:
1. To describe the background, rationale, processes and preparatory activities of KEF for the carbon market.
2. To document the current process, activities and experiences in the establishment of sample plots in the Kalahan ancestral domain as a basis for making reliable estimates of carbon stocks.
3. To extricate the challenges and lessons learned to date from KEF experiences in order to share them with other indigenous groups interested in the carbon market as a RES mechanism.
The study utilized five data gathering methods namely: review of related literature, plot establishment, direct observation, videography, and focus group discussion.