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National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Leveraging standards for greater impact: the need for measurable outcomes to drive incentives

Thursday, January 26

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Naomi Swickard

About the Talk

As Director, Land-based Frameworks, Naomi is responsible for implementing new standards frameworks and supporting host country users, particularly in the land-use sector. She currently oversees the Landscape Standard, a new initiative which provides outcome-based metrics for assessing sustainable production at the landscape scale. She also works to establish and oversee key partnerships for existing and new land-based frameworks, including with donors, host countries and business and NGO partners. Naomi also oversees the VCS Jurisdictional and Nested REDD+ (JNR) framework, which provides a fully operational accounting and crediting platform for jurisdictional REDD+ programs, including methods to integrate nested projects. Naomi oversees both implementation and program management for JNR, with her team supporting the on-theground efforts of governments and local partners. Previously, Naomi served as the Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use (AFOLU) Manager for VCS, where she oversaw the development and piloting of JNR and managed the evolution of the AFOLU Requirements, which is now the preeminent global carbon accounting standard for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD). Naomi oversaw the expansion of the standard to include peatlands, wetlands, grasslands and shrublands, as well as a number of updates and improvements to the AFOLU Requirements. She has also led advancement of various important tools, including the revised AFOLU Non-Permanence Risk Tool and the creation of the Jurisdictional NonPermanence Risk Tool. Before joining VCS, Naomi focused on quality assurance for VCS, Gold Standard and CDM projects with South Pole Carbon, and provided program coordination for climate change and environmental services programs with Conservation International. She has worked on climate and environment-related issues for over a decade. Naomi holds a Master’s degree in International Development,
 

About the Talk

The Paris Agreement has set in motion a new set of policy tools for national contributions to climate change mitigation. With the establishment of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), there is now a means to assess and promote progress towards the 2-degree target. However, to effectively reach these targets and to increase the scale of ambition, there is a need to catalyze private sector involvement and investment in activities to reduce emissions and to complement and build on government action. Robust frameworks for engaging and supporting private and voluntary action are thus needed to drive finance to concrete and measurable outcomes. A number of gaps still exist in terms of measuring and monitoring these impacts at different scales, particularly when such results need to be reconciled between different actors and levels of monitoring and reporting. In addition, there is a need to look beyond carbon and create new approaches to driving broad sustainability- protecting our land, air and water resources while ensuring that the costs and benefits of production are more equitably distributed. Cost-effective monitoring systems are needed that can demonstrate large-scale sustainability outcomes linked to finance and incentives to drive more coordinated public and private action. This session will provide an overview of the current needs and gaps to drive more harmonized and effective monitoring and verification systems to provide incentives for real measurable outcomes.

 


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