Refining carbon credits to contribute to large carnivore conservation: The jaguar as a case study

Carbon credits through Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) offer a unique opportunity to positively impact habitat and biodiversity conservation. Few financial tools are available to jaguar conservationists to conserve forest habitats; thus carbon credits are of great interest. In order to examine the opportunities and challenges of integrating conservation impact for jaguars and biodiversity into carbon credits, we review 44 REDD+ projects in Latin America certified by Verified Carbon Standard + Climate, Community and Biodiversity located within jaguar distribution, registered between 2011 and 2020. Of the 44, only eleven of those projects have jaguars as conservation targets, and seven of those eleven have a coherent plan for monitoring jaguar populations. While REDD+ projects promote forest cover and biomass conservation, tradeoffs based on limited financial resources at the onset and throughout the project may lead to limited monitoring capabilities and threat reduction, thus rendering co-benefit reporting deficient or absent. We suggest more rigorous baseline data requirements of fauna populations, greater collaboration between project developers, researchers and local communities to monitor wildlife and address human-jaguar conflicts, and clear requirements from national level REDD+ initiatives to ensure the conservation of a forest keystone species, the Americas’ largest felid.