A field guide to the language.

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. Straatos OS runs dMRV end to end, from field capture to registry submission.

The software a developer runs a nature-based project on end to end: the spatial model, field and community monitoring, impact assessment, multi-standard registry submission and public reporting. It hosts data from many external tools rather than locking them in, and produces one verifiable record from the first GPS point to the issued credit.

Straatos’s interoperability stance: reference and ingest data from many external tools rather than rebuilding or locking them in. The hub’s Solutions are the things a project hosts, integrates or connects to.

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.

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 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.

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. Straatos records FPIC as evidence.

How the value of a credit is split with the communities who steward the land. Straatos’s Cui Bono model binds the split and the payment to the verifiable record.

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.