Rainforest Alliance’s revamped standard to strengthen protection of High Conservation Value areas
Rainforest Alliance launches its revised Sustainable Agriculture Standard, with the HCV approach providing extra safeguards for highly valuable areas for people and nature.
The HCV Approach will help boost conservation and secure livelihoods in Rainforest Alliance certified farms
This month, the Rainforest Alliance is launching its updated Sustainable Agriculture Standard (SAS), raising the bar for the way farms and products are certified and focusing on continuously improving agricultural production and conservation across scales.
Within the SAS, the HCV approach will help producers become aware of the risk they might pose to areas valuable for ecosystems and local communities. “The Rainforest Alliance recognizes the value of the internationally recognized HCV framework for identifying and managing critical environmental and social values in production landscapes,” says Henriette Walz, Global Theme Lead for Deforestation at Rainforest Alliance, and part of the team that worked with HCVN on tailoring the HCV approach for the updated standard.
Under the new SAS, producers will not be able to certify their crops, if they grow them on lands where natural ecosystems have been cleared for agriculture, which makes it a “non-conversion” standard. But despite ruling out the risk of land clearing, usually the biggest threat to HCVs, the standard still factors in other threats to environmental and social values. This is where the HCV approach comes in. “It provides a framework to maintain natural ecosystems, while providing extra social safeguards, so the standard requires farmers to maintain and enhance HCVs,” explains Olivia Scholtz, senior project manager at the HCVRN Secretariat. “In the new standard, the approach is used to understand threats, maintain values, and how to put in place a management and monitoring plan for those HCVs.”
“The new standard supports HCVs protection, through requirements for no-deforestation and no-conversion,” says Walz. “It also includes criteria for wildlife protection, mapping production areas and ecosystems, soil conservation, protecting natural ecosystems, natural vegetation and water, as well as requirements for protecting the rights of local communities.”
The SAS also adds extra protection to HCVs, which are defined using a risk-based approach, developed by HCVRN and Rainforest Alliance’s Standards team. A risk-based approach is a process that simplifies how requirements for HCV protection are used in a standard. “We want to understand if there are any gaps in the standard’s existing requirements” HCVRN’s Scholtz says. “The farmer starts with a questionnaire that helps them understand the level of risk their production poses and the type of measures they need to take.”
“Certificate holders will assess their risk based on a few questions regarding their location relative to protected areas, Key Biodiversity Areas, Intact Forest Landscapes, Ramsar sites, UNESCO World Heritage Sites, local communities and communal lands. For example, if a Rainforest Alliance Certified farm is identified to be in or near a Key Biodiversity Area (KBA), then specific management actions will be required to protect the KBA’s associated conservation feature, such as important animal and plant life present,” says Walz.
The HCV risk questionnaire is linked to the risk assessment all certified farms now need to conduct, and is aligned with Rainforest Alliance’s newly created geospatial database, where farms must provide georeferences for their farms’ boundaries.
According to Walz, the HCV approach will focus initially on big farms, with highest impacts expected for instance in Brazil and Ecuador, where certified banana, coffee, and cocoa farms are individually certified.
Read more about the new Rainforest Alliance Sustainable Agriculture Standard here.
Read more about HCVN’s risk-based approaches here.
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Read MoreOur Partnerships
Alongside many global initiatives, our work with partners promotespractices that help meet the global Sustainable Development Goalsand build a greener, fairer, better world by 2030.
Femexpalma
In April 2022, FEMEXPALMA and the HCV Network signed a 5-year cooperation agreement to promote sustainable production of palm oil in Mexico. FEMEXPALMA is a Mexican independent entity that represents palm production at the national level and promotes the increase of productivity in a sustainable way.
With global markets becoming stricter, for Mexican producers to be able to export to key markets such as the European Union, they must meet strict requirements such as certification by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). To be certified by RSPO, the HCV Approach must be applied prior to the establishment of any new oil palm plantations. With this cooperation agreement, the HCV Network will support FEMEXPALMA’s members and allies to design better strategies to identify, manage and monitor High Conservation Values and support smallholders to achieve RSPO certification and implement good agricultural practices.
High Carbon Stock Approach
The High Carbon Stock Approach (HCSA) is an integrated conservation land use planning tool to distinguish forest areas in the humid tropics for conservation, while ensuring local peoples’ rights and livelihoods are respected.
In September 2020, HCV Network and the HCSA Steering Group signed a five-year Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to strengthen their collaboration to conserve forests and uphold community rights in tropical forests. The HCS and HCV Approaches are cornerstones of corporate no deforestation and conservation commitments, and increasingly for actors working at different scales. The collaboration aims to further support effective implementation of these commitments through increased uptake of the HCV and HCS tools.
Through this MoU, HCSA and HCVRN are pursuing two main strategic goals:
- Strive to promote the application of the two approaches in tropical moist forest landscapes and explore further opportunities for collaboration.
- Ensure that, where the two approaches are applied together, this happens in a coordinated, robust, credible, and efficient manner, so that HCS forests and HCVs are conserved, and local peoples’ rights are respected.
World Benchmarking Alliance
From May 2022, the HCV Network is an ally at the World Benchmarking Alliance (WBA). WBA is building a diverse and inclusive movement of global actors committed to using benchmarks to incentivise, measure, and monitor corporate performance on the SDGs, and will assess and rank the performance of 2,000 of the world’s most influential companies against seven systems of transformation by 2023.
The scope of WBA’s circular transformation was expanded to cover nature and biodiversity as recognition of the need for greater understanding, transparency and accountability of business impact on our environment. The WBA Nature Benchmark was launched in April 2022, which will be used to rank keystone companies on their efforts to protect our environment and its biodiversity. As HCV Areas are recognised as key areas important for biodiversity, companies that publicly disclose their actions to identify and protect HCVs will contribute to the assessment of their performance against the benchmark.
Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures - TNFD
The Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) is a global, market-led initiative, established with the mission to develop and deliver a risk management and disclosure framework for organizations to report and act on evolving nature-related risks, with the aim of supporting a shift in global financial flows away from nature-negative outcomes and toward nature-positive outcomes.
In April 2022, the HCV Network joined the TNFD Forum. The TNFD Forum, composed of over 400 members, is a world-wide and multi-disciplinary consultative network of institutional supporters who share the vision and mission of the task force.
By participating in the Forum, the HCV Network contributes to the work and mission of the taskforce and help co-create the TNFD Framework which aims to provide recommendations and advice on nature-related risks and opportunities relevant to a wide range of market participants, including investors, analysts, corporate executives and boards, regulators, stock exchanges and accounting firms.
Aquaculture Stewardship Council
The Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) is the world’s leading certification scheme for farmed seafood – known as aquaculture – and the ASC label only appears on food from farms that have been independently assessed and certified as being environmentally and socially responsible. In 2021, the HCV Network and ASC formalised their collaboration through a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). The MoU represents the first step in a fruitful relationship aimed at conserving HCVs in aquaculture. Although, existing guidance on the use of the HCV Approach currently focuses mainly on forestry and agriculture, the HCV Approach is however generic, and in principle also applicable to aquatic production systems. Through this MoU, this is recognised by the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) in their ASC farm standard, in which the protection of HCV areas is mentioned in the context of expansion
Accountability Framework Initiative
The Accountability Framework initiative (AFi) is a collaborative effort to build and scale up ethical supply chains for agricultural and forestry products. Led by a diverse global coalition of environmental and human rights organizations, the AFi works to create a “new normal” where commodity production and trade are fully protective of natural ecosystems and human rights. To pursue this goal, the coalition supports companies and other stakeholders in setting strong supply chain goals, taking effective action, and tracking progress to create clear accountability and incentivize rapid improvement. In July 2022, the HCV Network joined AFi as a Supporting Partner. AFi Supporting Partners extend the reach and positive impact of the AFi by promoting use of the Accountability Framework by companies, industry groups, financial institutions, governments, and other sustainability initiatives, both globally and in commodity-producing countries.
Biodiversity Credit Alliance
The Biodiversity Credit Alliance (BCA) is a global multi-disciplinary advisory group formed in late 2022. Its mission is to bring clarity and guidance on the formulation of a credible and scalable biodiversity credit market under global biodiversity credit principles. Under these principles, the BCA seeks to mobilize financial flows towards biodiversity custodians while recognising local knowledge and contexts.
The HCVN joined the BCA Forum in August 2023 to learn more from the many organizations already coming together to find effective pathways to opening up credit-based approaches, and how to contribute our knowledge and experience of years of working in a practical way, often with global sustainability standards and their certified producers, to protect what matters most to nature and people.
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Nature Positive Forum
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Our Mission as a network is to provide practical tools to conserve nature and benefit people, linking local actions with global sustainability targets.
We welcome the participation of organisations that share our vision and mission to protect and enhance High ConservationValues and the vital services they provide for people and nature. By collaborating with the Network, your organisation can contribute to safeguarding HCVs while gaining valuable insights and connections that support your sustainability goals.
We are seeking collaborative partners to help expand and enhance our work, as well as talented professionals who can join the growing Secretariat team, and for professionals who can contribute to the credible identification of High Conservation Values globally.
Join us in securing the world’s HCVs and shaping a sustainable future.