Climate glossary

The process of quantifying a project’s climate or nature outcome, documenting it, and having it independently checked. MRV is what turns activity on the ground into a credit a buyer can trust.

MRV built on continuous digital data (satellite, sensors, models, field apps) and software workflows rather than periodic manual reports.

Actions that protect, restore or sustainably manage ecosystems (forests, mangroves, grasslands) to deliver climate, biodiversity and community benefits.

A country’s self-set climate pledge under the Paris Agreement, updated every five years. NDCs frame much of the climate finance and policy that reaches the Global South.

The two halves of climate action: mitigation cuts or removes emissions; adaptation builds resilience to impacts already locked in. Much of the Global-South agenda is adaptation, historically the under-funded half.

The flow of capital into climate action, from multilateral funds and development banks to philanthropy and private investment. Its scale and where it lands are tracked closely and contested.

A country-level deal in which wealthy economies pledge finance to help a coal-dependent developing country move to clean energy fairly. South Africa, Indonesia and Vietnam have signed early ones.

A pooled commitment by buyers to purchase a nascent climate good (often durable carbon removal) before it is cheap, to pull supply into existence. Frontier is the best-known carbon-removal AMC.

The cumulative monetary benefits accruing across all sectors and actors over the investment’s lifetime, measured against the baseline and reported per intervention scenario.

Source: SAVi Kigali report, p.11

The financial operation that converts a future cash value into its present value.

Source: SAVi Kigali report, p.11

Systematically varying uncertain assumptions to test how far the results hold, identifying which variables move the answer most and what range of outcomes is plausible.

Source: SAVi Kigali report, p.23, footnote

A carbon value used for appraisal rather than observed in a market; 40 US dollars per tonne of carbon dioxide from the World Bank’s 2024 guidance, against the OECD’s figure of about 13.68 euro per tonne for Rwanda.

Source: SAVi Kigali report, p.23, p.37

A systems-thinking diagram of the relations between components: arrows carry causality, plus and minus signs carry its direction, and loops are labelled reinforcing or balancing.

Source: SAVi Kigali report, Box 1, p.15

A reinforcing loop pushes a change further in the same direction; a balancing loop damps the change.

Source: SAVi Kigali report, Box 1, p.15

A small upstream drainage area worked as one unit for the SUNCASA interventions; the report calls the six “critical micro-catchment areas” and works in their upstream parts.

Source: The hub’s plain-language definition; the SAVi report and the RFP use the term without defining it, SAVi p.13; RFP section 1

Three planting-based interventions SUNCASA reports hectares for: afforestation establishes trees where there was no recent forest, reforestation re-establishes trees where forest was lost, and agroforestry integrates trees into farmed land alongside crops or livestock.

Source: The hub’s plain-language definition; the SAVi report and the RFP use the terms without defining them, SAVi p.13, p.18; RFP section 1

A strip of restored vegetation alongside a river or stream, planted to slow runoff, filter pollutants and stabilise the bank; SUNCASA develops these to protect steep slopes, wetlands and other ecologically fragile areas.

Source: The hub’s plain-language definition; the SAVi report and the RFP use the term without defining it, SAVi p.13

Pulling CO₂ out of the atmosphere and storing it, by nature (reforestation, soils) or engineering (direct air capture, biochar, enhanced weathering). Durable CDR is where much advance-market demand now sits.

Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation, plus conservation and sustainable management. Credits are earned by keeping carbon in standing forest against a baseline of expected loss.

Regrowing forest or vegetation on degraded or non-forest land. Credits come from the carbon newly sequestered as biomass accumulates.

Carbon captured by coastal and marine ecosystems, above all mangroves, seagrasses and tidal marshes, where much of the carbon is stored in waterlogged soils and is hard to measure.

The mass of living vegetation above the soil, the main quantity forest-carbon MRV estimates. Measured with LiDAR, radar and optical models, calibrated against field plots.

The test of whether a climate benefit would not have happened without the carbon finance. Non-additional credits do not represent real extra impact.

When a project simply displaces emissions elsewhere, for example deforestation moving to the next valley. Credible MRV accounts for it.

How long the stored carbon stays out of the atmosphere. Forest carbon is reversible (fire, logging); durable removals like biochar are rated for centuries.

Rating or screening a carbon project before any credits are issued, so weaknesses in integrity, delivery and price can be caught early. Raters pair the score with improvement actions, specific recommendations a developer can act on to lift quality and value ahead of issuance.

An assessment method giving decision-makers a whole-life-cycle view of an infrastructure project, combining systems thinking with project-finance modelling so environmental, social and economic risks and externalities are priced and folded into the benefit-to-cost ratio.

Source: SAVi Kigali report, p.14

A cost-benefit analysis that values not only the financial flows but the wider economic, social and environmental impacts, so the ratio reflects societal return rather than project accounts alone.

Source: SAVi Kigali report, p.14, p.22

A project’s overall value for money: total benefits compared with total costs, read as the return for every unit of currency invested.

Source: SAVi Kigali report, p.25

10 percent, chosen against a Rwandan central bank lending rate of 15.8 percent, an expectation that the rate falls over a 25-year horizon, and the assumption that adaptation projects can access preferential finance.

Source: SAVi Kigali report, p.25, footnote

The number of years from project start at which cumulative benefits overtake cumulative costs; seven years here, 9 or 11 when carbon or carbon and health values are excluded.

Source: SAVi Kigali report, p.25, p.27

A simplified systemic map of how a system works, run over time to analyse its behaviour and predict performance; quantitative, and buildable by more than one method.

Source: SAVi Kigali report, p.11

The theoretical approach behind an analysis tool or simulation model: its underlying assumptions plus the qualitative and quantitative instruments used for data collection and parameter estimation.

Source: SAVi Kigali report, p.11

Statements of possible future developments, identified, explained and analysed so that responses, causes and consequences can be discussed; inherently speculative.

Source: SAVi Kigali report, p.11

A parameter of interest to stakeholders that reports how a key system variable develops over time and what trends emerge under given conditions.

Source: SAVi Kigali report, p.11

The Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs model suite, used to map and value the goods and services nature provides and to explore how ecosystem change alters the flow of those benefits to people.

Source: SAVi Kigali report, p.11, p.18

The two mapped states the assessment compares: Current, the land use before the project, and Restored, the same study area with the additional intervention hectares added.

Source: SAVi Kigali report, p.18

A unitless index from 0 to 1 estimating disturbance to habitat, where 0 is no habitat and 1 the highest quality.

Source: SAVi Kigali report, p.18

The volume of runoff held back per pixel relative to storm volume when land cover changes, modelled here for a 100 millimetre precipitation event.

Source: SAVi Kigali report, p.19

An accredited, independent third party that validates a carbon project’s design and verifies its claimed outcomes against a standard. The audit layer that lets a buyer trust a credit.

The largest crediting standard and registry, run by Verra, dominant in nature-based credits. Defines methodologies and issues credits.

REDD+ accounted at the scale of a whole state or country rather than a single project, reducing leakage and baseline gaming. ART/TREES is the leading jurisdictional standard.

The ICVCM’s integrity benchmark for high-quality credits. A CCP label signals a programme or methodology meets a common quality bar.

The Paris Agreement provision letting countries trade emission reductions internationally. It requires rigorous accounting to avoid double counting, driving registry interoperability.

A radar imaging technique that sees through cloud and at night, essential for monitoring the persistently cloudy tropics where optical satellites go blind.

Genetic material shed by organisms into water, soil or air. Sampling it reveals which species are present without seeing or catching them, a fast route to biodiversity ground truth.

Approaching a problem through the connections between factors, so that drivers, feedbacks and cascading effects across the whole system are visible rather than each indicator in isolation.

Source: SAVi Kigali report, p.14, p.15

The right of Indigenous peoples and local communities to give or withhold consent to projects affecting their land, on their own terms and before activities begin.

How the value of a credit is split with the communities who steward the land, and how that split and the payments made under it are documented.

A unit representing a measurable gain or avoided loss in biodiversity, distinct from carbon. Methodologies range from species indicators to a basket of habitat metrics.