By Max Mattern and Elizabeth Kiamba, CGAP

Women are critical to the delivery of many carbon projects, carrying out much of the work that underpins mitigation outcomes – and yet they often lack equal access to project governance, assets, and revenues. Recent calls from the ICVCM’s Continuous Improvement Working Group for a stronger focus on gender equity highlight the failure of existing safeguards to address women’s exclusion. With demand for high integrity credits rising, carbon markets risk losing credibility unless they reassess how women’s contributions are valued and measured – and move beyond gender as a “co-benefit” to recognising women’s role as central to project integrity.

This is where inclusive financial services can play a critical role. By empowering women to take on more meaningful roles in carbon projects and generating the data trails necessary to verify their contributions and benefits, financial services can serve as the infrastructure for high-integrity, gender-inclusive carbon markets.

Moving Beyond Safeguards

In carbon projects across the developing world, women do much of the everyday work that delivers emissions reductions: cooking with clean fuels, cultivating crops under agroforestry, and managing household decisions that shape how natural resources are used. Nevertheless, they are less likely to hold leadership roles or own project-related assets, and less likely to receive or influence project benefits. Insecure land rights, unpaid household labour, and discriminatory gender norms all limit their agency and exclude them from governance and benefit-sharing.

When projects fail to address these barriers, women’s contributions are undermined – along with the integrity of project claims. But discussions of gender in carbon projects have too often focused on safeguards rather than meaningful efforts to empower women to take ownership over mitigation efforts. Consultation and “do no harm” approaches may limit negative impacts, but do not ensure female ownership. This is why the ICVCM now advocates moving beyond safeguards in favor of what it calls “active empowerment”.

Addressing Women’s Exclusion through Financial Inclusion

Women’s empowerment is about more than just co-benefits. It strengthens emissions outcomes, with evidence showing that when women control productive assets and financial resources, and take on meaningful leadership roles, technology adoption is more consistent, reinvestment is higher, and mitigation outcomes are more durable.

CGAP’s research points to inclusive financial services as an opportunity to overcome some of the most persistent barriers preventing women from realising their potential. A partnership with project developer Value Network Ventures (VNV) and the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) has been examining how financing could help women salt farmers shift from diesel to solar-powered water pumps. The project was certified under the W+ Standard, which has provided valuable insight into how it is contributing to women’s empowerment outcomes.

By registering loans and assets in women’s names, women’s ownership over project activities was bolstered, effectively reducing project delivery risk; 97% of women became technically proficient in the operation of the pumps and 71% reduced their use of diesel fuel. Meanwhile, zero loan defaults signalled continued engagement with the project.

The financial design also drove deeper integrity gains. Women’s incomes rose by 240%, strengthening long-term incentives to keep the assets functioning and mitigating permanence risk. Additionally, 84% reported greater household decision-making power, and their negotiation capacity – the power to advocate for their own interests – jumped from 6% to 93%, reducing governance risks related to elite capture and community pushback.

Better Measurement Links Empowerment to Integrity

Of course, the link between women’s empowerment and project integrity is only as strong as the data underpinning it. While most carbon standards offer tools for reporting gender co-benefits, the truth is that projects too often treat gender as a box-ticking exercise or narrative add-on rather than a verifiable dimension of project integrity. Without more robust data on women’s participation and benefits, buyers lack the information they need to consider gender as an input into project due diligence.

One option is to double down on more robust, outcome-based measurement frameworks. But more stringent measurement requirements also come at a price, which may not be feasible for many project developers.

Yet again, financial services have a role to play. Because financial services produce auditable records such as loan documentation, asset registration, and payment data, they offer a low-cost means of proving women’s participation, benefits, and sustained engagement. For example, Carboneers’ biochar project in Ghana leverages data on payments to women’s mobile money wallets to prove their participation in and compensation for biochar production, whilst in East Africa, 4R Digital’s CAVEX platform aggregates data from carbon projects on women’s digital loan repayments for cookstoves and solar home systems, providing buyers with concrete evidence of women’s device usage and engagement.

Buyers Will be Critical to Reframing Gender as an Integrity Indicator

Carbon markets are in the middle of an integrity reset, and women’s inclusion can no longer be treated as optional. But placing additional requirements on project developers will not be enough. Only when buyers begin to demand – and more importantly, pay for – demonstrated evidence of gender equality, will the supply of gender inclusive projects follow.

By embedding stronger expectations on gender equality within its Core Carbon Principles (CCPs), the ICVCM can send a clearer signal to buyers who increasingly rely on the CCP label in procurement and due diligence processes. Standards can make gender-disaggregated data more explicit within monitoring, reporting, and verification requirements. And ratings agencies and data providers can surface gender metrics in ways that directly inform credit assessment and purchasing decisions. The question is no longer whether gender equity matters for carbon market integrity, but whether the market is willing to price it accordingly.

But incentives only go so far. Project developers need practical mechanisms to break down gender barriers and produce credible impact data. Inclusive finance offers both: a path to making women’s inclusion measurable, verifiable, and real.

Max Mattern and Elizabeth Kiamba are financial specialists at CGAP, where they explore the role of financial services in building more inclusive carbon markets. CGAP is a think tank focused on financial inclusion, housed within the World Bank.

Any opinions expressed in this commentary reflect the views of the authors and not of Carbon Pulse.

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