ART TREES 3.0: Winrock’s Jurisdictional Engine, LEAF Coalition & the Scaling J-REDD+ Push

How Architecture for REDD+ Transactions is upgrading TREES to v3.0, introducing Beyond Carbon Benefits, and anchoring the US$3–6 billion Scaling J-REDD+ Coalition launched at COP30 Belém.

By Abhishek Das • April 2026 • 14 min read

1. What Is ART — And Why Jurisdictional Scale?
2. TREES Mechanics — Reference Levels, MRV & Safeguards
3. TREES 3.0 — The 2026 Update
4. Beyond Carbon Benefits — The New Optional Certification
5. The LEAF Coalition & the $10 Floor Price
6. Scaling J-REDD+ Coalition — COP30 Belém
7. Nepal ERPA — Beyond the Tropical Giants
8. Jurisdictional Pipeline & Geographies
9. Integrity — ICVCM CCP, CORSIA & Article 6
10. ICE GreenTrace Registry Migration (Spring 2026)
11. Commercial Implications for Buyers & Jurisdictions
12. Frequently Asked Questions
13. What to Do Now — For Jurisdictions & Buyers

What Is ART — And Why Jurisdictional Scale?

The Architecture for REDD+ Transactions (ART) is a voluntary carbon standard dedicated to a single task: crediting emission reductions and removals from forests at the scale of whole jurisdictions. A “jurisdiction” here means an entire country or a sub-national administrative unit such as a state or province — not an individual forest concession. This architectural choice is what distinguishes ART from project-scale REDD+ methodologies historically supported by Verra’s VCS.

ART operates a single dedicated standard — The REDD+ Environmental Excellence Standard, or TREES — which sets rules for reference-level setting, monitoring, reporting, verification (MRV), safeguards, and crediting. Every participating jurisdiction sets a single forest-carbon baseline (reference level) for its territory and is credited against that baseline for verified reductions in deforestation and forest degradation, plus removals from restoration. There is no project-level crediting inside an ART jurisdiction — the entire territory is the unit of account.

The jurisdictional choice matters for three reasons. First, scale: an ART jurisdiction can register hundreds of thousands to millions of hectares in a single programme, producing issuance volumes that match the scale of corporate and sovereign demand. Second, leakage: crediting at the jurisdictional level captures activity-shifting between forests within the jurisdiction, eliminating a significant leakage risk that has dogged project-level REDD+. Third, alignment with Article 6: Paris Agreement cooperative approaches work jurisdiction-to-jurisdiction, so a TREES programme can dovetail naturally with sovereign authorisation and corresponding adjustments.

TREES Mechanics — Reference Levels, MRV & Safeguards

A TREES programme has four structural pillars. The first is the reference level: a historic forest emissions baseline set from satellite-derived deforestation and forest-cover data, typically covering the preceding 10–15 years. Jurisdictions with high historic deforestation receive baselines that reflect that history. High-forest low-deforestation (HFLD) jurisdictions — which have managed to preserve their forests and therefore have lower historic emissions — receive a distinct “HFLD crediting pathway” that rewards continued conservation rather than penalising them for not having high historical deforestation.

The second pillar is monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV). TREES prescribes annual forest-cover and carbon-stock monitoring using peer-reviewed remote-sensing methods, with ground-truthing at specified intervals. MRV reports are independently verified by approved Validation and Verification Bodies (VVBs) before credits are issued. The system is engineered for transparency: reference level data, monitoring datasets and verification reports are publicly available on the ART Registry.

The third pillar is safeguards, particularly for indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs). TREES requires demonstrable free, prior and informed consent, a published benefit-sharing plan, and a grievance mechanism. Safeguards compliance is verified alongside carbon MRV, and non-compliance can delay or block issuance. The fourth pillar is a pooled buffer reserve for reversal risk — a portion of credits issued by every jurisdiction is contributed to the buffer, which is drawn on if a verified reversal (wildfire, policy change, insolvency) occurs.

TREES 3.0 — The 2026 Update

TREES 3.0 is the third major version of the standard and, by ART’s own framing, the most substantial revision since TREES 2.0 was finalised in 2021. The draft was published for public consultation, and the consultation received more than 350 comments — approximately 75% more than the consultation on the previous version. That volume reflects the growing relevance of jurisdictional REDD+ in the 2026 market, and it gave ART a substantially wider set of technical inputs to work from.

Five major themes emerged from the consultation and are reflected in the TREES 3.0 draft. First, tightened reference level rules to reduce scope for baseline inflation and to standardize data vintage requirements. Second, updated MRV expectations that reflect advances in remote-sensing technology and allow higher-resolution monitoring without imposing a cost burden on jurisdictions that lack institutional capacity. Third, strengthened IPLC safeguards with clearer consent and benefit-sharing language. Fourth, revised buffer reserve calibration for reversal risk. Fifth and most novel, the introduction of the Beyond Carbon Benefits optional certification detailed in the next section.

TREES 3.0 is explicitly designed to interoperate with the Paris Agreement and CORSIA frameworks. The version update maintains backwards compatibility for jurisdictions already in verification under TREES 2.0, with clearly defined transition rules for moving from one version to the next at crediting period renewal. Jurisdictions do not need to re-run their entire reference level calculation to adopt TREES 3.0 — but specific elements (safeguards, MRV, buffer) will be updated at the first crediting-period milestone after adoption.

Beyond Carbon Benefits — The New Optional Certification

The Beyond Carbon Benefits (BCB) certification is TREES 3.0’s most distinctive addition. It is an optional add-on certification recognising jurisdictional programmes that deliver verified co-benefits beyond greenhouse gas accounting. Jurisdictions that earn BCB certification can market their credits at a premium, and buyers seeking to integrate biodiversity, community and ecosystem-services reporting into their ESG disclosures can use BCB-labelled retirements to substantiate those claims.

BCB is structured as three independent modules, each of which can be pursued independently or in combination:

Modules are independently verifiable, so a jurisdiction can earn the social-cultural module without necessarily qualifying for biodiversity, and vice versa. Several LEAF Coalition buyers have signalled they will weight BCB-certified credits more heavily in future procurement — which gives jurisdictions a direct economic incentive to invest in the additional verification work required to earn the label.

The LEAF Coalition & the $10 Floor Price

The Lowering Emissions by Accelerating Forest finance (LEAF) Coalition was launched in 2021 as a public-private coalition to pre-purchase TREES credits at a fixed minimum price of US$10 per tonne of CO₂ equivalent. The $10 floor was chosen for a specific economic reason: it was identified as the price point at which jurisdictional REDD+ becomes financially viable at scale, covering the fixed costs of national MRV systems, the transaction costs of verification, and an adequate share for IPLCs and local communities.

LEAF participants include a mix of sovereign donors (United States, United Kingdom, Norway and others) and corporate buyers, several of which are Fortune 500 companies with multi-year forest-credit retirement targets. Purchases are executed as Emission Reduction Purchase Agreements (ERPAs) with participating jurisdictions. An ERPA typically includes volume commitments, delivery schedules, quality and safeguard requirements, and provisions for post-delivery verification and risk management. LEAF’s role is to pool demand so that individual corporate buyers do not need to negotiate ERPAs directly with sovereign or sub-national governments.

The architectural insight is that LEAF is a demand-side mechanism. TREES is the supply-side standard. The two interlock: LEAF guarantees that verified TREES credits will find a buyer at an economically meaningful price, which de-risks jurisdictional investment in the MRV and safeguards infrastructure that TREES requires. Without a demand signal large enough to cover fixed costs, no jurisdiction would invest in a TREES programme; without a credible supply standard, LEAF would have nothing to buy. The combination is what gives jurisdictional REDD+ its commercial footing.

Scaling J-REDD+ Coalition — COP30 Belém

At COP30 in Belém, Brazil, a successor initiative was announced: the Scaling Jurisdictional REDD+ (J-REDD+) Coalition. Its stated target is to mobilize US$3–6 billion per year in jurisdictional REDD+ finance by 2030 — roughly an order of magnitude above current annual LEAF flows. The Coalition is structured to include sovereign donors, multilateral development banks, private sector buyers and host forest jurisdictions, and it explicitly integrates with the LEAF Coalition rather than replacing it.

The Coalition received prominent recognition in connection with the Brazil Amazon deal announced at COP30, and the White House publicly cited the initiative as part of the broader package of international climate finance commitments made at the summit. Host country announcements accompanying the launch signalled intent from a number of Amazon Basin, Congo Basin and Southeast Asian tropical forest jurisdictions to accelerate their TREES pipelines in anticipation of expanded demand.

For ART, the Scaling J-REDD+ Coalition is consequential because it signals that the jurisdictional approach is being embraced as a platform by a broader set of finance providers. It also creates operational pressure on the TREES 3.0 rollout: if demand is going to scale an order of magnitude between 2026 and 2030, the supply-side standard needs to be both rigorous enough to satisfy buyers and flexible enough to onboard jurisdictions that have not previously operated their own REDD+ MRV system. TREES 3.0’s updates on MRV scalability and safeguard clarity are designed partly with this scaling challenge in mind.

Nepal ERPA — Beyond the Tropical Giants

On 23 January 2026, Nepal signed an Emission Reduction Purchase Agreement under the ART framework for up to 4 million tonnes of CO₂-equivalent reductions, at an estimated total value of approximately US$55 million. The programme covers three provinces — Gandaki, Bagmati, and Lumbini — spanning mid-mountain and inner-terai forest landscapes rather than the dense lowland tropical forests that dominated early TREES pipelines.

The Nepal ERPA is significant for three reasons. First, it demonstrates that ART is applicable beyond the large tropical-forest jurisdictions (Ghana, Costa Rica, Ecuador and others) that populated the initial pipeline — the architecture works for mid-size mountain-forest programmes as well. Second, Nepal has historically managed its community forestry network through Community Forest User Groups (CFUGs), and the ERPA is designed to funnel benefit-sharing through these existing institutions. Third, the deal’s value — US$55 million for a single mid-size jurisdiction — is material for Nepal’s national climate finance and provides a concrete proof-point for other mountain-forest countries considering jurisdictional REDD+.

Operationally, the Nepal programme is structured to deliver credits across a multi-year crediting period with scheduled milestone payments tied to verified reductions. Safeguards monitoring is integrated with CFUG reporting, and the benefit-sharing plan reflects Nepal’s constitutional framework for indigenous and local community rights. The ERPA is expected to become a reference case for how TREES 3.0 can be deployed in non-tropical-giant contexts.

Jurisdictional Pipeline & Geographies

Participating jurisdictions on the ART Registry collectively cover approximately 25% of the world’s tropical forests — more than 400 million hectares, or over 1 billion acres. This footprint is considerably larger than the cumulative area covered by project-scale REDD+ on any voluntary registry, reflecting the architectural advantage of jurisdictional crediting: one registration captures the entire territory.

As of early 2026, five jurisdictions are in active TREES verification, with additional jurisdictions at earlier pipeline stages (concept note, reference level development, public consultation). The pipeline geography spans all three major tropical forest biomes: Latin America (Amazon Basin and Central American), Africa (Congo Basin and West African), and Southeast Asia. ART does not disclose the specific jurisdictions in pipeline until they move to public consultation, but the five-in-verification count represents a meaningful step-up from TREES 2.0 era activity.

For buyers, the pipeline signals continuity of supply through 2027–2028 even before the Scaling J-REDD+ Coalition’s new entrants come online. For jurisdictions considering entry, the existing pipeline also offers a template: TREES 3.0’s clearer reference-level and MRV rules, combined with published examples of consultation documents from jurisdictions already verified, reduces the institutional burden of getting started.

Integrity — ICVCM CCP, CORSIA & Article 6

ART sits within the same broader integrity architecture as the other major voluntary standards, but with some jurisdictional nuances. On the ICVCM Core Carbon Principles, the ICVCM is running its category-level assessment for jurisdictional REDD+ separately from its project-level REDD+ assessment. TREES is under active review and ART has engaged with the ICVCM assessment panel throughout 2024–2025; the outcome will determine whether TREES credits can carry the CCP label and with what conditions.

On CORSIA, ART is eligible for airline compliance use subject to the ICAO eligible-unit list. CORSIA’s design favours jurisdictional crediting for REDD+ because its accounting rules were built to interface with sovereign host country registries and corresponding adjustments. Jurisdictions participating in TREES can authorise credits for CORSIA use through the standard Letter of Authorisation (LOA) process, which aligns the jurisdictional host country with ICAO’s no-double-counting requirement.

On Article 6, ART is arguably the voluntary standard with the cleanest Article 6.2 cooperative-approach fit. Because TREES units are already jurisdictional, the corresponding adjustment accounting required by Article 6.2 is straightforward: the host country applies the adjustment at the level at which the credit is issued. TREES 3.0 explicitly maintains this compatibility, and several host countries have begun developing their Article 6 authorisation frameworks around existing TREES programmes. For Article 6.4 Mechanism (PACM, the UNFCCC-operated successor to CDM), the interaction is less direct because PACM is project-scale rather than jurisdictional, but dual-registration options are being explored.

ICE GreenTrace Registry Migration (Spring 2026)

Alongside ACR, the ART Registry is operated by Winrock’s Environmental Resources Trust (ERT). In Spring 2026, Winrock is migrating both registries to ICE GreenTrace, a next-generation carbon registry platform built by Intercontinental Exchange (ICE). Winrock is ICE’s launch partner for GreenTrace, and the migration will run both ACR and ART accounts onto the same platform while preserving each standard’s independent governance and methodology rulebook.

For ART specifically, the GreenTrace migration brings four operational improvements: real-time issuance and retirement updates, developer APIs exposing issuance data to marketplaces and ratings providers, an enterprise audit trail linking jurisdictional MRV and verification documents down to the serial-number level, and an atomic settlement layer for credit transfers. The settlement layer is particularly relevant for ART because large ERPAs often involve multi-party transfers across sovereign, multilateral and corporate accounts, and manual reconciliation of these transfers has been an operational burden under the legacy registry.

The migration is being managed with a parallel-access window during the cutover. Existing ART account holders — jurisdictions, LEAF Coalition buyers, marketplaces — will receive migration instructions directly from Winrock. All historical issuances, retirements and serial numbers will be preserved through the transition. A Q1 2026 preview webinar is planned for marketplaces, ratings providers and high-volume buyers to work through API integration and settlement workflows before the live cutover.

Commercial Implications for Buyers & Jurisdictions

For corporate buyers, ART credits are a distinct asset class from project-scale REDD+. The jurisdictional architecture, LEAF Coalition price floor and TREES 3.0 integrity features combine to create credits that are priced higher than most project-scale REDD+ units but carry demonstrably lower integrity risk. Buyers building multi-year forest retirement portfolios increasingly use ART credits as the “anchor” of the portfolio with project-scale credits layered alongside.

For jurisdictions considering entry, the commercial calculus has shifted materially since TREES 2.0. The LEAF floor price provides a revenue baseline; the Scaling J-REDD+ Coalition signals significant volume expansion through 2030; the BCB certification opens an additional pricing tier; and the ICE GreenTrace infrastructure reduces the operational and reconciliation friction that made participation burdensome. TREES 3.0 codifies these improvements into a single standard version that jurisdictions can target as they build out their MRV and safeguard systems.

For marketplaces and intermediaries, ART credits present both opportunity and constraint. The opportunity is in the growing volume and premium pricing, particularly for BCB-certified issuances. The constraint is that ART is not a high-turnover spot market — ERPAs are pre-negotiated, volumes are scheduled, and the market clears much more slowly than project-scale VCU trading. Intermediaries who add value in ART tend to focus on ERPA structuring, MRV consulting, and jurisdictional capacity-building rather than secondary-market trading.

Frequently Asked Questions

These are the questions that come up most often when jurisdictions and corporate buyers consider ART TREES as part of a 2026 forest-carbon strategy.

What to Do Now — For Jurisdictions & Buyers

The TREES 3.0 launch, Scaling J-REDD+ Coalition, and ICE GreenTrace migration together make 2026 a consequential year for anyone operating in or near the jurisdictional REDD+ space. Here is the practical checklist:

(1) For jurisdictions already in TREES: Review the TREES 3.0 published draft against your current reference level, MRV and safeguard systems. Identify which elements can be updated at the next crediting period milestone without triggering a full re-baseline. Begin engaging your IPLC stakeholders on the strengthened safeguard language.

(2) For jurisdictions considering entry: Use the TREES 3.0 publication as the target version for your MRV and safeguard system design. Review the Nepal ERPA as a mid-size jurisdiction proof-point, and consult with ART on a concept note. Budget for capacity building in remote-sensing and benefit-sharing administration.

(3) For LEAF Coalition buyers: Confirm whether your forward contracts reference TREES version explicitly. If you want BCB-weighted procurement, signal this to LEAF in the next bidding cycle so supply can respond. Factor the ICE GreenTrace migration into your operational integration timelines.

(4) For corporate buyers outside LEAF: Engage directly with ART and participating jurisdictions on ERPA opportunities. The Scaling J-REDD+ Coalition expands the set of counterparties and volumes available; multi-year offtake agreements will increasingly include TREES 3.0 and BCB labelling clauses.

(5) For marketplaces and ratings providers: Prepare for ICE GreenTrace API integration in Q1–Q2 2026. Participate in the Winrock preview webinar to understand issuance, retirement and settlement data structures ahead of the live cutover.

(6) For project developers operating at project scale in host countries with active TREES programmes: Coordinate with the host country registry and ART to avoid double-counting between project-scale and jurisdictional crediting. Some jurisdictions have explicit nesting rules; others require project-scale credits to be retired alongside jurisdictional reductions. Confirm the rule before committing to a new project in an ART jurisdiction.

(7) For ACR account holders who also hold ART accounts: Use the consolidated Winrock ERT account structure during the GreenTrace migration to simplify cross-standard reporting. The shared platform will make combined ACR + ART portfolio accounting materially easier from Spring 2026 onwards.