Eligibility criteria

Inclusion criteria for projects wishing to use this methodology

The #SexyTrees methodology applies to projects that meet the following eligibility criteria:

Table A. Eligibility criteria for #SexyTrees

Criteria	Description
Project activities	Restoration initiatives aiming to recover the ecological function of degraded tropical land by adding more trees — including agroforestry, reforestation, or natural regrowth or any combination of the three. The agroforestry activities reverse partial losses of soil fertility, biodiversity, water retention, and tree-based carbon on lands previously deforested or under unsustainable cultivation, while providing food security and livelihoods to smallfarmer and Indigenous implementers. For small-scale restoration of degraded land using agroforestry practices
Implementation entity	Entities implementing the projects can be any recognized legal entity, but they should have a clear mandate from local IP and/or LC communities to represent the project in their area (see FPIC).
Land rights	Proof of land ownership, possession, stewardship, or land-use rights must be legally valid and compliant with international law (human rights, and Indigenous rights), jurisdictional law, and customary rights or Indigenous law (see Land and Appendix C). BCPs must have documentation for all land-rights holders for project implementation.
Identification of stakeholders and beneficiaries	All IP and LCs must be identified, and their inclusion in remuneration from the project must be transparently disclosed.
Vulnerability	The project area is degraded and/or deforested or under unsustainable agricultural use if no program is implemented.
Prior funding or stacking	As addressed in the additionality section. The location to be conserved has not received previous funding through mechanisms that overlap in time or duplicateconflict with the funding to be allocated by biodiversity credit. Projects may only stack VBCs with carbon crediting if they can clearly demonstrate they are doing additional activities (over and above what they are doing for carbon).
Project Scale	The minimum project geography must encompass an area that is the size of the natural range of an individual of the indicator species that qualify for validation of biodiversity. Projects can include adjacent or non-adjacent properties with a trajectory to create contiguous areas.
Geographical location	No limitations. This methodology was developed with tropical rainforests in mind but it can be adapted with appropriate evidence for other geographies.
Legal projects	Projects must comply with all relevant local, regional, national, and international laws and regulations.
Project duration	Projects should be viable for the long-term future, preferably for a maximum of 30 years, but IP and LC contracts may be structured as autorenewing yearly, and cancellable after one year.
Governance	Governance of the project should be driven by a collaborative approach with IP and LC and transparency into all aspects of the project.