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The Natural Forest Standard is a voluntary carbon standard designed specifically for medium- to large-scale REDD+ projects. The standard places equal emphasis on the combined carbon, social and biodiversity benefits of a project and requires a holistic approach to ensure compliance with the standards requirements and to achieve certification. The NFS applies a standardised risk-based approach to carbon quantification for consistent and comparable baseline calculations and aims to link local actions into national frameworks for reducing the loss of natural forests.
The NFS excludes commercial resource extraction and focuses on promoting the conservation of natural forests and the biodiversity and social values within them. The NFS requires projects to ensure no net loss of biodiversity and to establish an appropriate benefit distribution mechanism to deliver social benefits to communities within the project area.The NFS demands annual verification by independent third-party carbon auditors using the ISO14064-3 and ISO 14065 frameworks. The resulting certificates for fully verified projects are issued as Natural Capital Credits.