Sierra del Divisor Conservation Corridor Grouped Project

---

SIERRA DEL DIVISOR LANDSCAPE: Protecting one of Peru’s most important strongholds of biodiversity and turning real, long-term conservation into high-integrity carbon and biodiversity credits.

Fronterra is structuring and implementing the Sierra del Divisor grouped project as an integrated conservation, restoration and sustainable development programme that links the national park with the surrounding landscape: Sierra del Divisor National Park (under the Biodiversity MERESE scheme, with SERNANP and RESTORE), adjacent native and farming communities in buffer and influence areas, regional protected areas and responsible forestry concessions. 

By building a single, transparent, technically robust grouped project, we secure habitat and ecosystem function inside the Park while enabling durable social and economic benefits for neighbouring communities, producing verifiable carbon and biodiversity credits that reflect measurable ecological gains.

MERESE (Mecanismo de Retribución por Servicios Ecosistémicos) is one of Peru’s mechanisms to finance management and conservation of natural protected areas through payments for ecosystem services. 

Sierra del Divisor’s design uses MERESE to channel conservation finance and technical resources directly into the Park’s protection and active management in partnership with neighbouring communities. Under the project’s contractual architecture:

• SERNANP acts as the public partner responsible for Park management and on-the-ground conservation delivery. SERNANP is the main contributor for the environmental service of biodiversity maintenance.
   
• Restore is the anchor financier and final beneficiary in biodiversity outcomes for funded biodiversity protection actions inside the Park.
   
• Fronterra acts as structuring and implementing party, coordinating finance, technical design, buffer zone activities implementation and market engagement to produce internationally credible nature-based credits financed by private buyers.
   
• Organised Communities through their communal organisations or federations participate as local partners, ensuring activities and services are delivered by teams with local knowledge and the right operational capacity.
   

MERESE provides the institutional framework to align public conservation duties with private finance, creating a transparent payments channel that benefits the park, its rangers and the ecosystems that sustain both biodiversity and carbon services.

The Sierra del Divisor carbon work is conceived as a high-integrity carbon removal project that combines protected-area conservation (avoided emissions / avoided degradation) with targeted restoration in influence zones. Key technical features include:

• Methodology: The feasibility and accounting will apply internationally recognized approaches for avoided emissions consistent with rigorous programmatic methodologies (VERRA VM0048, as dully approved by Peru's Environment Ministry), and with full country alignment.
   
• Measurement: Carbon accounting integrates advanced GIS and remote sensing to define activity areas and baselines, complemented by extensive field carbon inventories and carbon monitoring plots to estimate biomass changes.
   
• Verification cadence & duration: Credits are expected to be produced on a regular verification cadence, with carbon credits issued every year and a project lifetime designed to deliver durable, long-term removals across a 40-year accounting horizon.
   
• Conservative baselines & additionality: Baseline setting emphasizes historical land-use analysis, evidence of additionality, to ensure that credits represent real, additional climate benefit.
   
• Governance & standards: Due diligence, monitoring and issuance are implemented to meet stringent social and environmental safeguards and third-party validation/verification to ensure buyer confidence.
   

GROUPED PROJECT

Sierra del Divisor is designed as a grouped project, intentionally combining multiple territorial categories under one unified framework:

1. National Park (inside the Park): activities financed through MERESE and delivered in partnership with SERNANP, RESTORE and local organised communities (park protection, ranger capacity, rewilding, law enforcement support, biological monitoring & research, restoration of ecosystems and control of invasive species).
    
2. Native and farming communities (buffer & influence zones): participatory restoration and sustainable production interventions; community forest management; livelihood diversification; and participatory monitoring.
    
3. Regional protected areas and corridors: coordinated management actions to secure landscape connectivity and ecological integrity.
    
4. Responsible forestry concessions: landscape-scale practices that reduce pressure on primary forests and integrate certified sustainable timber and non-timber value chains.
    

This design increases ecological integrity at landscape scale and enables the project to capture both avoided emissions in protected forests, removals from restoration and sustainable land-use transformation and biodiversity certificates from biodiversity maintenance in the core Park area. 

Meaningful local consent and shared benefits are central to the project. Sierra del Divisor is committed to:

• A robust Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) process with indigenous and rural communities in the buffer and influence areas, implemented according to best practice and Peruvian law.
   
• Full ESG due diligence aligned with IFC Performance Standards and international best practice, ensuring human rights, livelihoods and cultural values are respected.
   
• Community-led implementation models (capacity building, local employment, co-management agreements) to ensure that benefits — jobs, capacity development, and revenue streams — accrue locally.
   

The project’s benefit-sharing model balances short-term incentives that support early participation with long-term revenue sharing that aligns incentives across decades. 

Key principles:

• Transparent splitting of payments for environmental services linked to biodiversity maintenance (via MERESE/SERNANP).

• Transparent splitting of payments for environmental services linked to carbon maintenance and removals (via COMPAÑIA DE CONSERVACION AMAZONICA) between FRONTERRA, local communities and implementation partners.

• Legal and financial arrangements that protect community rights, ensure traceable funds flows and provide clear governance and grievance mechanisms, and are officially recognized by the Peruvian government as per applicable law.
   
• Provisions for reinvesting 70% of annual revenues in conservation, local livelihoods and forest management, in direct benefit for communities and biodiversity.
   

Sierra del Divisor applies a rigorous monitoring framework:

• Spatial monitoring (GIS/remote sensing) for activity boundaries, land-use change and dynamic baselines.
   
• Field carbon and biodiversity plots for repeated measurements and statistical inference of stocks and biodiversity trends.
   
• Independent third-party validation and verification, and an issuance schedule aligned to yearly verification cycles for carbon credits.
   
• IFC-PS compliant reporting and stakeholder consultations to ensure transparency and accountability.
   

• 1,35m ha Hectares protected in the Park and 200k ha in the grouped project area.

• Biodiversity indicators and expected gains for priority species and habitats.
   
• 40+ of indigenous and farming communities engaged through FPIC and co-management agreements.
   
• 8,000,000 estimated carbon credits over 40 years and schedule of credit issuance
   

• SERNANP: Public partner and Park manager (implementing conservation inside Sierra del Divisor National Park).
   
• MINAM: Ministry of Environment of Peru, regulatory authority for carbon and biodiversity certification.

• Restore: anchor investor for biodiversity outcomes.
   
• Fronterra: project design, development and co-implementation, market access, and financing structuring.

• ECOM: route to market of carbon outcomes to European, US and Asian compliance markets.
   

Sierra del Divisor is an opportunity to invest in high-integrity nature-based climate solutions that deliver measurable climate mitigation, protect irreplaceable biodiversity, and support community wellbeing. Fronterra welcomes partners for credit purchase, investment, technical collaboration, and community partnerships. 

Contact us to learn how to support the Sierra del Divisor grouped project and be part of a durable solution for climate, biodiversity and rural development. 

Verra Registry Account: https://registry.verra.org/app/projectDetail/VCS/5369