The HCV Approach – the case of standards
Across the world, multiple certification schemes are using the HCV approach to strengthen their efforts to preserve areas of key value for people and ecosystems within commodities production and trade.
Across the world, multiple certification schemes are using the HCV approach to strengthen their efforts to preserve areas of key value for people and ecosystems within commodities production and trade.
It was the late 1990’s when the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) developed the High Conservation Value (HCV) concept to make sure that forest managers could identify and maintain forests of critical importance for nature and people. The concept evolved into the HCV approach, which puts the conservation of key natural and cultural sites at the heart of land management and provides ways to identify and uphold those values that can be adapted to any place or commodity.
Standards and the HCV approach
Since then, several major certification schemes have embedded the HCV approach in their standards, and some are actively working with the HCV Network to make sure the commodities they certify protect environmental, social, and cultural values. Depending on their focus, the schemes leverage the HCV approach differently. Here are some examples:
- Maintaining and enhancing HCVs has been central to FSC Standards. Forest managers must boost their efforts to find and safeguard environmental and social values in forest areas and treat any threat to HCVs as a threat of severe or irreversible damage. Engaging with indigenous and local communities that rely on HCVs is also a staple for FSC certification. Wood used in products with the FSC Mix labelled, must not be linked with the destruction of HCVs.
- As part of its principles and criteria, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) requires palm oil growers to identify, manage, and monitor HCVs. RSPO’s Principle 7 dictates that land clearing must not cause deforestation or damage to any area required to protect or enhance High Conservation Values.
- Bonsucro leverages the HCV approach to assess the impacts of sugarcane production on biodiversity and ecosystems services, as well as social values.
- The Better Cotton Initiative worked with the HCV Network on revising its principles and criteria to include the HCV approach and biodiversity management tools into the Better Cotton Standard, and to make them more accessible for smallholder farmers. The HCV Network also collaborated with Better Cotton Initiative to develop simple tools for cotton famers to map and maintain biodiversity on and around their farms.
- Fairtrade uses the HCV approach as part of its Standards, and the HCV Network is currently collaborating with Fairtrade to provide producers – many of whom are smallholder farmers - with simple guidance to identify and maintain HCVs on and around their farms.
- Companies that source Rainforest Alliance certified products are committing to protect HCVs. The HCV tools developed by the HCV Network in collaboration with RA for their newly updated Standard, is used by farmers to understand threats, maintain values, and how to put in place management and monitoring plans for these HCVs.
As of late 2020, we identified 21 certification standards using HCV in some way as part of their scheme. Some of these, like the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) require a set of assessments prior to expansion of cultivation to make sure that new plantings are not established at the expense of HCVs. Other schemes such as the FSC, Rainforest Alliance and Fairtrade, use the HCV approach to protect outstanding values in all certified farms and forest management areas.
One-size-fits-all?
Across the years, the HCV Network has worked with several schemes to develop simpler, risk-based HCV tools for smallholders’ use, who often don’t have the needs of bigger companies.
Where the risks for HCVs could be low, the aim is to avoid adding requirements beyond those of the certification standard. This may require schemes to add to or amend their standards based on ‘HCV lens’ gap analyses. Where risks are medium, farmers need to adopt risk mitigation measures that lowers threats. Where risks are high and difficult to mitigate, e.g. for large-scale clearings and conversions of natural forests for cotton fields, schemes normally require HCV assessments conducted by a HCVN licensed assessor.
Looking forward
The HCV Network recognises that each standard has its specific uses and needs, and therefore we will continue to work with certification companies to tailor the use of the HCV approach to their needs. So far, the HCV Network has largely focused on developing tools to effectively operationalise HCV requirements, in particular on identifying HCVs. Standards also require more support, including: more operational guidance on HCV management and monitoring, auditing to verify that HCVs have been effectively identified and are maintained, as well as assessing how landscape applications of the HCV approach can support certification schemes to deliver environmental and social benefits beyond the farm and into the wider landscape.
It can be a significant challenge for smallholder farmers to enter sustainability markets. Yet they produce a big share of the total traded amounts of cocoa, natural rubber, palm oil, and many other crops and commodities. Poverty, lack of clear tenure and low productivity push smallholders to clear forests, contribute to land degradation and higher greenhouse gas emissions. To help smaller growers, the HCV Network works with Proforest to provide a set of simple set of positive practices that smallholders can use outside certification. The initiative, called Forest Friendly Farming, is designed to help companies implement their HCV and forest protection commitments by incentivising and supporting smallholders to qualify as suppliers. The approach may also serve as a first step towards certification, and/or to keep controversial materials out of products that contain a mix of certified and uncertified materials.
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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
Get Involved
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.