PROGRESS CONTINUES APACE
When ART published TREES 3.0 in June 2026, it represented an important step forward for jurisdictional REDD+ and efforts to protect and restore forests.
As I said in the announcement, “TREES 3.0 reflects what we have learned from four years of working alongside jurisdictions, Indigenous Peoples and local communities, and technical partners to continue to improve the world’s leading jurisdictional REDD+ standard. This version opens the door for more jurisdictions to join, makes our requirements clearer and reporting more efficient, and ensures TREES continues to represent best practice in the market. High integrity and broad participation are not competing goals: they reinforce one another, and TREES 3.0 is designed to deliver both.”
Since the publication of TREES 3.0, Central African Republic published its TREES Concept, marking the 27th jurisdiction to join the ART program. 25 percent of the world’s tropical forests are now represented in jurisdictional REDD+ programs listed on the ART Registry, an area covering more than 450 million hectares (1.1 billion acres) of forest. Eight jurisdictions are currently in verification, with several more undergoing completeness checks for listing.
Earlier in June, ART issued 1.1 million TREES Credits to the Government of Costa Rica, the first jurisdiction to use the TREES Crediting approach and the Removals approach for reforestation and forest restoration within the country from 2017-2019.
To continue building momentum, ART is coordinating with the World Bank to give Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) and Initiative for Sustainable Forest Landscapes (ISFL) jurisdictions a route to maintain access to carbon finance after the World Bank funds sunset. TREES 3.0 offers a new time-bound transition pathway for FCPF and ISFL jurisdictions to join ART under unique eligibility criteria, and ART is working with the World Bank on transition tools to support these jurisdictions through this process.
Looking ahead, the ART Secretariat is working to finalize the Beyond Carbon Benefits certification. Developed to be paired with TREES, the certification is designed to build upon ART’s commitment to broadening jurisdictional REDD+ access to high-integrity markets and expanding the benefits derived from them.
As we prepare for Climate Week NYC, including our event, “Impact at Scale: Building Momentum for Forests and Communities with ART,” we are excited for upcoming meetings with governments, community leaders and credit buyers during this annual global gathering.
It has been a busy year so far for the growing ART team, and the next few months – including COP 31 in Turkey – will continue apace. I am energized by the work underway, particularly among governments building jurisdictional REDD+ programs. ART’s mission focuses on unlocking finance at scale for ambitious climate action. We are seeing that develop in jurisdictions across Africa, Asia and the Americas, offering hope for the world’s forests and the people who depend upon them.
Sincerely,
Mary Grady
Executive Director
P.S. In August, ART’s Managing Director, Christina Magerkurth, made the case that forests remain standing due to ongoing efforts and without climate finance these efforts can stop, in an op-ed published by Carbon Pulse.
ART NEWS
ART is Headed to Climate Week NYC
The ART team is heading to New York for Climate Week NYC, where ART will host its first event in the city. The event will feature JREDD+ leaders from governments and Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities for a conversation about the growing momentum behind high-integrity jurisdictional REDD+ and what it will take to scale.
ART representatives will also participate in panels, roundtables, and discussions throughout the week. Those attending Climate Week who would like to connect with the team are encouraged to get in touch.
ART Releases TREES 3.0, Opening New Pathways for Jurisdictions to Join and Streamlining the Path to High-Integrity Forest Crediting
June 2026
ART released version 3.0 of The REDD+ Environmental Excellence Standard (TREES), its high-integrity standard for measuring, monitoring, verifying and crediting climate progress in the forest sector. Reflecting four years of experience across 27 participating programs, TREES 3.0 streamlines reporting, improves readability and adds clarity throughout, while offering greater flexibility to use existing data sets for monitoring removals. A new time-bound transition pathway, developed in coordination with the World Bank, gives Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) and Initiative for Sustainable Forest Landscapes (ISFL) jurisdictions a route to continue accessing carbon finance through ART. The release follows a robust public consultation that drew more than 30 submissions and nearly 700 individual comments.
ART Releases Update to the TREES Validation and Verification Standard
August 2026
Following the release of TREES 3.0, ART released version 3.0 of the TREES Validation and Verification Standard (TVVS), which details the validation and verification requirements and procedures for jurisdictional REDD+ crediting under TREES. Version 3.0 of the TVVS reflects the latest requirements included in TREES 3.0 as well as lessons learned from four years of validation and verification under ART. All new validations and verifications must use version 3.0 of the TVVS, which includes requirements for both TREES 2.0 and TREES 3.0, while validations and verifications that kicked off prior to August 2026 may continue to use the previous version.
ART Announces New VVBs
May 2026
The ART Secretariat announced the provisional approval of two new Validation and Verification Bodies (VVBs), bringing the total to five ART-approved VVBs available to interested Participants. Per the TREES Validation and Verification Standard, provisionally approved VVBs must successfully complete a witness audit with a relevant International Accreditation Forum member accreditation body to become fully approved. ART requires independent third-party validation and verification of all Participant programs, with TREES Credits issued only after a rigorous process confirms the program meets the requirements of TREES, including all safeguards.
ART Team Grows
The ART Secretariat continues to expand in response to growing global demand for high-integrity jurisdictional REDD+. Over the summer, ART welcomed SiuSue Mark as Senior Manager, Safeguards and IPLC Engagement, bringing two decades of experience across democracy, human rights, and natural resource governance, and Brenda Zerecero Salazar as Manager, Technical Team, bringing deep expertise in jurisdictional GHG accounting and forest monitoring. Please join us in welcoming SiuSue and Brenda to the team. The team now includes 14 dedicated professionals, strengthening ART’s capacity to engage with partners, support outreach across regions, and deliver on its mission to certify large-scale forest emissions reductions and removals with the highest environmental and social integrity.
PARTICIPANT UPDATES
With the recent publication of the TREES Concept from the Central African Republic, there are now 27 national and subnational jurisdictions engaged with ART across Africa, Asia, and North and South America—together representing nearly 25% of the world’s tropical forests, and area twice the size of Greenland.
Learn more about these transformative programs on the ART Registry>>>
Credit Issuance – In June 2026, ART issued 1.1 million (1,095,881) TREES Credits to the Government of Costa Rica for its success in restoring and establishing forests within the country from 2017-2019. Under The REDD+ Environmental Excellence Standard (TREES), Costa Rica is the first jurisdiction to use the TREES Crediting approach and the Removals approach for reforestation and forest restoration. Learn more about this important milestone>>>
Validation and Verification – 8 jurisdictions are currently in validation and/or verification: Acre (Brazil), Bhutan, Ecuador, Ghana, Guyana, Pará (Brazil), Tocantins (Brazil), and Vietnam.
FCPF Credit Reissuance – FCPF credits were reissued on the ART Registry for Democratic Republic of Congo and Cote d’Ivoire.
Two ways ART is working with the World Bank to support jurisdictions at scale
ART now offers Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) and Initiative for Sustainable Forest Landscapes (ISFL) jurisdictions two distinct ways to work with us. The first is the new TREES 3.0 transition pathway. TREES 3.0 introduces a transition pathway, developed in coordination with the World Bank, for jurisdictions participating in the World Bank’s FCPF and ISFL programs to join ART using their FCPF or ISFL accounting area. The pathway provides a time-bound onramp that builds on work done to date and allows those that have navigated the early-mover challenges of jurisdictional forest programs to come into the ART fold through TREES 3.0.
The second is credit reissuance, a separate registry function that lets jurisdictions bring credits already earned under the World Bank’s process to market through ART. When ART reissues FCPF and ISFL credits, it is passing them through to enable the credits to be transacted, not holding them to TREES requirements or re-assessing the underlying results.
A government holding excess FCPF or ISFL credits can reissue them through the ART Registry. It can also choose to transition its program to TREES. These are separate choices. Reissuing does not require transitioning, transitioning does not erase the value of what came before, and a jurisdiction can pursue one, the other, or both over time.
Both matter, and both reflect the same idea that runs through ART’s work with the Bank: there should be more than one way to support the jurisdictions doing the work, and the more finance that reaches them, the better.
NEW RESOURCES
TREES 3.0
In June 2026, the ART Board approved TREES Version 3.0, which builds on four years of experience implementing the Standard across 26 programs, with streamlined reporting, improved readability and clearer requirements throughout.
TREES 3.0 Templates
In August 2026, ART released participant templates for TREES 3.0. These include templates for theTREES Concept, the TREES Registration Document, the TREES Monitoring Report, the TREES Reversal Risk Rating Tool Template and the TREES Variance Request Form.
TREES 3.0 Webinars
In July 2026, ART hosted a series of webinars in English, French, Portuguese and Spanish to present an overview of the revised Standard with a specific focus on what has changed from TREES 2.0.
TVVS, v3.0
In August 2026, the ART Board approved Version 3.0 of the TREES Validation and Verification Standard, which outlines the requirements of the process under ART.
THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
Carbon market debates miss what HFLD actually buys
Carbon Pulse, August 2026
In an op-ed for Carbon Pulse, ART Managing Director Christina Magerkurth argues that High Forest, Low Deforestation (HFLD) jurisdictions should not be penalized for their success. Deforestation pressure is not static. Commodity markets, mining, infrastructure and agricultural expansion can quickly push into forests that were previously considered secure. In many HFLD jurisdictions, low deforestation rates reflect years of active stewardship and policy choices, including the work of Indigenous Peoples and local communities. High-integrity carbon finance can help sustain those efforts before forest loss occurs — rather than waiting until deforestation has accelerated. Christina also explains how TREES applies a conservative, science-based approach to crediting HFLD jurisdictions, including strengthened requirements under TREES 3.0.
Why financing forests through carbon markets makes sense
World Economic Forum, March 2026
In an op-ed for the World Economic Forum, ART Board member Frances Seymour argues that high-integrity, jurisdictional-scale carbon markets are an essential tool for closing the global forest finance gap and must be part of any serious effort to halt tropical deforestation, which reached a record 6.7 million hectares of primary forest loss in 2024. She makes the case that the risks of using carbon markets, both demand-side concerns about buyers avoiding their own emissions cuts and supply-side concerns about over-crediting, leakage, and reversals, are real but manageable, particularly through the Jurisdictional REDD+ (J-REDD+) approach negotiated under the Paris Agreement. She urges skeptics of nature-based solutions to update their risk perceptions and embrace a portfolio approach in which protecting forests now buys time to scale engineered solutions while preserving carbon stocks, biodiversity, and ecosystem services that would take centuries to restore.
ENGAGEMENT & OUTREACH
Article 6 Implementation Capacity Building, Latin America — September 2026
ART took part in the Article 6 Implementation Capacity Building event in São Paulo, organized by IETA, the Ministry of Trade and Industry (Singapore), and Singapore Cooperation Enterprise, which convened government representatives from 12 Latin American countries for practical work and collaboration on Article 6 implementation.
World Bank Standards Workshop — July 2026
ART spent nearly two full days with FCPF and ISFL governments, donor governments, and observers ahead of the Joint Green Carbon Funds meeting in Paris, outlining the transition pathway TREES 3.0 provides for FCPF and ISFL countries and how its requirements work in practice. Full post>>>
London Climate Action Week 2026 — June 2026
ART took part in a range of events convening the jurisdictional REDD+ community, including the Scaling JREDD+ Coalition sessions, the CORSIA-aligned supply coalition, and the VCM+ Coalition workshops, amid strong momentum for connecting high-integrity jurisdictional programs with the demand needed to sustain them. Full post>>>
Webinar: Building Synergies Between JREDD+ and Supply Chain Strategies — June 2026
ART participated in a webinar exploring how jurisdictional REDD+ works, why companies are engaging, and practical pathways to support tropical forest conservation while advancing supply chain goals. Full post>>>
Latin America Climate Summit (LACS) — June 2026
ART took part in the Latin America Climate Summit hosted by IETA, presenting on the Beyond Carbon Benefits certification, an optional certification that will enable ART jurisdictions to report a wide range of positive social and environmental impacts of their REDD+ programs and bring additional value to their TREES Credits. Full post>>>
GenZero Climate Summit 2026 and Innovate4Climate – May 2026
ART was represented in Singapore at two events, the GenZero Climate Summit and Innovate4Climate (I4C), including panel presentations. The GenZero Summit gathers global leaders to accelerate decarbonization, and I4C is the World Bank’s annual conference on carbon pricing and carbon markets.
REDD+ Global Summit 2026 — May 2026
ART attended the REDD+ Global Summit in Nairobi, an important gathering of REDD+ practitioners, country representatives, technical assistance providers, standard-setting bodies, and donors that strengthened existing connections and emphasized the value of peer-to-peer exchange among countries. Full post>>>
High-Level Dialogue on Financing Bolivia’s New Forest Agenda — April 2026
ART joined government representatives, investors, donors, and technical partners in Santa Cruz de la Sierra to discuss financing mechanisms for climate adaptation and mitigation, with jurisdictional REDD+ frameworks and TREES central to building high-integrity forest carbon markets aligned with Bolivia’s national climate goals. Full post>>>
Regional Technical Workshop on Carbon Removals — April 2026
ART presented on TREES in a regional technical workshop in Villa de Leyva, Colombia focused on carbon removals and integrating innovative remote sensing technologies into national monitoring systems. Full post>>>
Workshop on TREES Safeguards — April 2026
ART hosted a two-day workshop in Washington DC with leading organizations working for communities and forests, focused on TREES and the process of validation and verification. Full post>>>
One Basin – One Vision Congress – March 2026
ART joined REPALEAC at the One Basin — One Vision Congress in Kinshasa, DRC, and held dedicated meetings with REPALEAC’s partner organizations as part of its work with the IPLC Advisory Group for the review of TREES. Full post>>>
