Open letter from Beto Borges, Chair of the Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities Guidance Council for the Equitable Earth Coalition

Deforestation is fundamentally an economic problem, but only a fraction of climate finance
reaches the communities who have safeguarded forests for generations.

Recognizing this injustice, a coalition of organizations came together early in 2023 to
address it.

The coalition was founded by Everland, Forest Trends and Wildlife Works but grew into a
diverse team of experts – over 125 individuals representing more than 60 organizations –
including Indigenous leaders, conservation and international development experts, tech
professionals, and carbon scientists. Our collective goal was to ensure that the voluntary
carbon market (VCM) evolved to address the priorities of Indigenous Peoples, traditional
communities and Global South governments, and meet the urgent need to scale up
investment and action to end deforestation.

The result is Equitable Earth – a new forest conservation standard built on the conviction that Indigenous and traditional communities must be co-creators of credible and just solutions to halt deforestation, and therefore that private finance must align with their leadership, rights, and ancestral knowledge.

From the outset, we have been guided by communities. The standard was developed to
address the principles and criteria for the VCM, set forth by the Indigenous and traditional
community members of the Peoples Forests Partnership. With this foundation, the
Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities Guidance Council I chaired advised the
technical experts throughout the development of Equitable Earth’s methodologies, standard and platform. And the coalition has been in consultation with the governments of several forest nations to ensure the standard is designed to deliver against NDCs and other national and sub-national sustainable development goals.

Shaped by these extensive consultations, Equitable Earth is uniquely positioned to serve the needs of forest stakeholders – on the ground and in the marketplace.

It is now time for our coalition to step back.

As was always the plan, Equitable Earth will be operated and governed independently by an organization that shares our mission and has the technical infrastructure, governance, and operational capacity to take the standard forward.

We have found this organization in ERS (Ecosystem Restoration Standard), an independent, ICVCM-accredited global carbon standard dedicated to enabling efforts to restore and protect the natural world.

On 12 June 2025, ERS announced it had acquired Equitable Earth and now operates the standard fully independently of the coalition. We handed it over with confidence that ERS will bring the standard to market, ensuring the priorities of forest communities remain at its center.

Beto Borges
Director of the Communities and Territorial Governance Initiative at Forest Trends
Chair of the Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities Guidance Council for the Equitable Earth Coalition

Find out more here: www.ers.org/faq