About the Forest Carbon, Markets and Communities (FCMC) project

In the context of United States Government (USG) commitment to support fast-start financing for activities that reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+), Tetra Tech ARD implemented the Forest Carbon, Markets and Communities (FCMC) project, a USAID/Washington, DC-based PLACE IQC Task Order to supply technical services on forest carbon to USAID/Washington, as well as bilateral and regional missions, particularly in the Andean Amazon.

The FCMC program focuses on four tasks:

1. Social and Environmental Soundness (SES);
2. Finance and Carbon Markets
3. Low Emissions Development Strategies (LEDS); and
4.  Monitoring, Reporting, and Inventories (MRV/Inventories).

The project’s objectives are to enhance the international architecture for REDD+ and enhance country-level readiness to implement REDD+.

FCMC support has included:

• Research, analysis, tools, and methodologies on global REDD+ readiness, as well as individual countries;

• A series of workshops and trainings to help build capacity of USAID, implementing partners, and host countries to deliver on REDD+ programming;

• Support the launch of a multi-stakeholder international REDD+ capacity building alliance (Alliance for Global REDD+ Capacity - AGRC) and learning agenda (Lessons on Social Assessment of REDD+ - LISA-REDD)

• Technical support to the USG Development Credit Authority, as well as the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) Carbon Fund;

• A webinar for institutional investors and supported the launching and maintenance of an online REDD+ platform for understanding forest carbon markets;

• On Low Emissions Development Strategies, the development of a low-emissions development strategy for the Huila Province of Colombia, and is performing cross-sectoral technical assessments for the Government of Guatemala, and;

• On measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV), a best practices module for forest carbon MRV, is supporting online forest carbon MRV training (particularly in Latin America), and is leading work to help the Government of Peru develop a forest carbon baseline.

FCMC completed operations in May 2015. For more information, contact Olaf Zerbock (ozerbock@usaid.gov), Evan Notman (enotman@usaid.gov), or Diane Russell (dirussell@usaid.gov).