The REDD+ Environmental Excellence Standard, the world's first purely jurisdictional carbon credit standard under Virginia-based carbon registry ART, has accepted Vietnam's carbon registration and monitoring reports, S&P Global quoted ART as saying in a statement on Wednesday. 

This milestone paves the way for Vietnam to bring jurisdictional carbon credits to the market.

Jurisdictional carbon credits are backed by the governments of the project’s host country and buyer country, with bilateral agreements to ensure that each carbon credit transferred can only be counted toward one country's emission reduction target under the UN's Paris Agreement.

Vietnam has signed such bilateral agreements with Japan and Singapore under the UN's Article 6 framework.

REDD+ standard issues carbon credits from projects that reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. 

Despite the trust crisis in the past two years that questioned environmental integrity of the REDD+ emission accounting approaches, REDD+ is still widely seen as a viable market instrument for companies to offset their emissions at affordable costs.

The documents submitted by Vietnam included a registration report that covered carbon crediting for emissions reduced or to be reduced in 2021-25 and a monitoring report for emission reductions in 2021-22.

Carbon registry ART's acceptance of Vietnam's documents indicated that the country's REDD+ program is eligible for jurisdictional carbon credit issuance.

Subsequently, it can proceed with developing REDD+ projects, and then validating and verifying emission reductions through accredited verification bodies, according to the statement.

"Following successful validation and verification, the ART Board may approve the issuance of serialized TREES Credits to Vietnam," the ART statement said.

If the TREES credits are successfully issued, Vietnam will be able to export these credits to its Article 6 partner countries.

According to the submitted documents, the Vietnamese government has selected 4.26 million hectares of forest areas to participate in this jurisdictional REDD+ program, which accounts for about 29 percent of the Southeast Asian country's total forest areas.

The program is expected to cover 11 contiguous provinces, including Quang Ngai, Binh Dinh, Phu Yen, Khanh Hoa, Ninh Thuan, Binh Thuan, Kon Tum, Gia Lai, Dak Lak, and Dak Nong, which jointly account for 22.4 percent of the country's population.

The population involved in this program comes from more than 20 different ethnic groups, mainly ethnic minorities, the documents showed.

Based on the latest government scheme, Vietnam planned to establish a national carbon credit exchange and officially start its operations in 2028. 

Before the full rollout of the exchange, the government proposed to initiate a pilot run of a carbon trading platform from 2025.

South Korea, Australia, and Switzerland have expressed an interest in trading Article 6-aligned jurisdictional carbon credits with Vietnam, the Vietnamese Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment said in a document earlier in May.

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