Verra's New Sea Level Rise Risk Assessment Guidance
This article is an automatically translated version of the original Japanese article. Please refer to the Japanese version for the most accurate information.
This is the newsletter from Sustainacraft Inc.
Methodology Updates is a series that covers carbon and biodiversity credit methodologies. This article explains Verra's new guidance on sea-level rise risk assessment for Wetland Restoration and Conservation projects.
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Introduction
Background
Verra recently published a document titled Guidance on Sea-Level Rise Risk Assessment for Wetland Restoration and Conservation Projects1. This document supplements the sea-level rise risk calculation section in Verra’s Agriculture, Forestry, and Other Land Use (AFOLU) Non-Permanence Risk Tool (NPRT). It applies to projects located partially or entirely in the intertidal zone at the time of risk assessment.
One significant concern for projects within the AFOLU sector is non-permanence, which is the risk of sequestered carbon being re-released into the atmosphere over time. To address this, Verra developed the AFOLU NPRT. This tool is used to determine the quantity of Carbon Credits a project must contribute to the shared Buffer Pool at the registry level. One category of Reversal risk recognized by this tool is natural disaster risk, which includes events such as fires, extreme weather, pests, and diseases.
In October 2023, Verra updated the AFOLU NPRT to explicitly include Reversal risk from sea-level rise in the natural disaster risk section. Coastal areas are exposed to the impacts of sea-level rise, such as inundation and erosion, which can directly endanger the carbon stored within these ecosystems. Sea-level rise risk must be included in the overall risk calculation for projects in coastal areas that may be exposed to future sea-level rise impacts.
While the above update allowed for sea-level rise risk to be considered, specific guidance on its usage was lacking. The newly released guidance aims to fill this gap. The use of this new guidance is optional and does not change the existing scoring system. It serves as guidance to encourage Project Developers to pay attention to sea-level rise risks to project Permanence, promote more conservative score assignments, and facilitate the use of digital tools.
Therefore, while this announcement does not represent a major change, as this newsletter has not previously covered the AFOLU NPRT in depth, we would like to take this opportunity to introduce the existing NPRT methodology and the newly added guidance below.
How Risk Scores are Calculated in the Existing AFOLU NPRT
In the AFOLU NPRT, sea-level rise risk scores are assigned using a calculation system that combines the risk's "impact" and "significance." Below, we will first explain how the "impact" and "significance" factors are scored according to AFOLU NPRT v4.2, and then discuss how adaptation measures can reduce the overall sea-level rise risk score.
Calculation of Overall Score
In AFOLU NPRT v4.2, an overall sea-level rise risk score is assigned by combining the "impact" and "significance" scores (Table 1). The final sea-level rise risk score, after considering adaptation measures, is added to the total score for the entire natural disaster risk category. The total score directly corresponds to the percentage of total Carbon Credits generated that must be contributed to the Buffer Pool (e.g., if the final risk score is 10 points, it means 10% of the generated Credit volume must be contributed to the Buffer Pool).