Technicial Specification

What is a technical specification?

Technical specifications are evidence-based documents that describe the activities that are used to provide carbon offset services in a Plan Vivo project. Technical specifications state the expected carbon offset potential of an activity and specify the management actions required to achieve this potential.

Technical specifications are used by project technicians to assess the carbon offset potential of activities planned by individual producers. By comparing producers’ plans with the management requirements stated in the technical specification project technicians can quickly assess the carbon offset potential of the activity without the need for time consuming biomass surveys and baseline studies for each individual activity. Technical specifications also provide easy to measure monitoring indicators which allow rapid and cost-effective monitoring by the technical team and community technicians.

To enable cost-effective verification technical specifications must be evidence-based, this means that all sources of information should be stated and all assumptions made justified.