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Dear California Air Resources Board, 

I am writing on behalf of COICA to thank CARB for the opportunity
to participate in California’s process to develop regulations to
include jurisdictional REDD+ offsets in the Cap and Trade Program.
We congratulate ARB on the productive and inclusive workshop held
in Sacramento, California on October 28, 2015 to discuss this
issue, which is of critical importance to the 400 indigenous
communities and ethnicities across Amazonia that we represent. We
believe that REDD programs like the one proposed by California will
not only lead to significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions
from deforestation, but provide essential economic benefits to our
communities and help protect the forests on which our livelihoods
and cultures depend.

We would like to express support for the steps outlined in the
Staff White Paper and the frameworks developed by the REDD Offset
Working group (ROW) to ensure high quality offsets from
jurisdictional programs. We are supportive of the jurisdictional
approach to protecting tropical forests that is being pioneered by
the members of the Governors’ Climate and Forests task force (GCF),
and recognize that the Brazilian states of the GCF are global
leaders in developing robust jurisdictional REDD+ programs with
strong social safeguards and benefit-sharing mechanisms. Our
partnership with the GCF is an important mechanism to continue to
develop these safeguards through inclusive processes, and share
lessons across the GCF regions. The REDD+ program proposed by
California could provide real and tangible benefits to our
communities through connections to these programs. 

In this sense, COICA has developed Amazon Indigenous REDD+ - RIA
which includes the worldviews and perspectives of the Amazon
peoples in order to enable an adequate REDD+ process in the
indigenous territories. The UNDRIP and other international tools
are included in the RIA framework due to the importance of these
for the Indigenous peoples to access to benefits.

We offer our continued support to ARB staff as they continue to
lead on climate change through the development of this important
program. Thank you once again for including us in your process, and
your thoughtful consideration of our perspectives. COICA is hopeful
that this process can continue such that the necessary linkages can
be made by 2017, in time for the third compliance period of the Cap
and Trade Program.

Sincerely, 
Juan Carlos Jintiach
Technical Secretary of COICA