Equitable Earth Expands REDD+ Risk Mapping to Bolivia, Nigeria, Peru, and Tanzania

Equitable Earth has added four new countries to its jurisdictional REDD+ risk mapping framework, bringing total global coverage to 16 jurisdictions across three continents. Bolivia, Nigeria, Peru, and Tanzania are the latest additions under the organization's Terrestrial Forest Conservation Methodology, known as M002.

The expansion marks a meaningful step in Equitable Earth's broader goal of covering all major REDD+ jurisdictions worldwide, with a stated mission to help protect and restore 1% of the natural world by 2030.

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What the Risk Maps Do

The M002 methodology uses advanced modeling tools and the latest available datasets to assess where forest biomass loss is most likely to occur. Equitable Earth's centralized carbon accounting approach uses jurisdictional risk maps to allocate baselines for both deforestation and degradation, paired with annual monitoring using the latest science.

In practice, this means project baselines for the 2024-2029 period are set based on where deforestation pressure is genuinely high, rather than on assumptions. The aim is to direct climate finance toward areas where forest protection can have the greatest measurable impact.

Why Jurisdictional Approaches Matter

Jurisdictional REDD+ systems have been gaining ground in voluntary carbon markets as a response to longstanding credibility issues at the project level. The fundamental difference between jurisdictional and project-level REDD+ is that all the forest in a national or subnational jurisdiction must be considered when setting a baseline and monitoring deforestation. With the advent of remote sensing and artificial intelligence, this can now be done to a high level of accuracy.

By operating at a regional scale, jurisdictional frameworks are better equipped to account for leakage, where deforestation simply shifts to an unprotected area nearby, and for broader land-use dynamics that project-level approaches can miss.

New Coverage Across Latin America and Africa

The four new countries significantly expand Equitable Earth's footprint across two regions under serious deforestation pressure. Latin America and Africa continue to face forest loss driven by agriculture, logging, mining, and infrastructure expansion, making targeted baseline-setting especially critical in these areas.

With over 4 million hectares of projects already moving into certification across Brazil, Colombia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, M002 is now fully equipped to bring high-integrity forest protection to market. The new jurisdictions build on that foundation.

Equitable Earth said it plans to keep expanding its risk mapping work over time as part of its push to support high-quality REDD+ projects globally.

About Equitable Earth

Equitable Earth has established itself over the past five years as one of the most innovative and fastest-growing providers of certification for nature-based carbon projects. The program has been formally recognized as eligible against the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM)'s Core Carbon Principles, the market's highest benchmark for quality.

M002 introduces independent, centralized carbon accounting and remote-sensing tools to monitor deforestation, providing a uniform and conservative approach to crediting. It also formalizes benefit-sharing rules through a Livelihoods Pillar requiring measurable outcomes for local and Indigenous communities.

Earlier this year, Equitable Earth secured €12.6 million (roughly $14.6M USD) in new financing to accelerate certification operations and scale its methodology globally. Thibault Sorret, CEO of Equitable Earth, said the funding allows the organization to grow and establish itself as the global standard for nature-based projects.