Nepal on Friday signed an Emission Reductions Purchase Agreement (ERPA) with the LEAF Coalition, paving the way for the potential sale of up to 4 million tonnes of verified emission reductions from its jurisdictional REDD+ program across Gandaki, Bagmati and Lumbini Provinces.
The deal, valued at an estimated USD 40 million or more, marks Nepal’s first formal entry into high-integrity jurisdictional carbon markets and represents one of the largest performance-based forest finance opportunities in the country’s history.
The transaction will be facilitated by Emergent, the LEAF Coalition’s intermediary, and implemented under the Architecture for REDD+ Transactions (ART) using its TREES standard.
The standard requires stringent carbon accounting, robust forest monitoring, safeguards for Indigenous Peoples’ rights, permanence and leakage controls, and transparent benefit-sharing mechanisms.
The LEAF Coalition is among the world’s largest public–private initiatives supporting high-integrity forest carbon finance.
Participating countries are offered a guaranteed floor price of USD 10 per ton for jurisdictional REDD+ credits, providing a stable incentive for scaling credible forest conservation programmes at national and subnational levels.
“This marks an important milestone for Nepal, reflecting the culmination of decades of work to protect forests, establish credible monitoring systems, and place communities at the centre of forest stewardship,” said Mario Boccucci, Head of the UN-REDD Secretariat. He added that the agreement positions Nepal to expand jurisdictional approaches and engage global markets that reward integrity, scale and long-term performance.
Once payments are accessed, revenues will be distributed through Nepal’s emerging benefit-sharing framework.
Under current provisions, 80 percent of proceeds will be channeled to community forest user groups, Indigenous Peoples, local governments and other implementing entities, underscoring the central role of communities in conserving and restoring the country’s forests.
“This represents an important milestone in Nepal’s long-standing efforts to protect forests and addressing climate change, and demonstrates Nepal’s commitment and readiness to deliver verified emission reductions, which can unlock significant payments from public and private buyers to support Nepal in building a sustainable economy that supports healthy forests and resilient communities,” says Einar Telnes, Energy and Climate counsellor at the Norway Embassy in Nepal.
Over recent years, Nepal has strengthened the institutional, technical and safeguard systems required for high-integrity jurisdictional REDD+, including enhanced monitoring capacity and governance arrangements. The ERPA is expected to enable the country to scale forest-based climate action while linking local stewardship efforts to global results-based finance.
