ECOSYSTEM MARKETPLACE – Shades of REDD+: The Risk of Diverting Carbon Finance from Nature to Technological Carbon Removals
Increasingly, engineered carbon removal technologies are pitched against nature-based solutions to tackle the climate crisis – particularly in the voluntary carbon markets. Will forests be passed over to benefit from carbon finance – again?
Read MoreCOMMENT: New claims for a new era of private sector carbon finance Â
The voluntary carbon market can build a common understanding for a new financing claim beyond offsetting that represents the same commitment of taking responsibility for unabated emissions by mitigating carbon beyond boundaries, writes Sarah Leugers of Gold Standard.
Read MoreCOMMENT: We’re still in – let’s align the voluntary carbon market with Paris rather than play by our own rules
Corresponding adjustments will be needed in the future whenever a carbon credit is used to offset emissions, to help ensure the promise is kept that the atmosphere is no worse off, argues Hugh Salway of voluntary carbon market certifier Gold Standard,
Read MoreCOMMENT: Quality counts – scaling voluntary offsetting the right way
Owen Hewlett of Gold Standard welcomes the Taskforce to Scale the Voluntary Carbon Market’s intention to make sure companies can take responsibility for their emissions, but argues that scale alone should not be the marker of success.
Read MoreCOMMENT: WWF ‘Blueprint for Corporate Action on Climate & Nature’ – Key takeaways for the voluntary carbon market
In Dec. 2020, WWF published a ‘Blueprint for Corporate Action on Climate and Nature’, setting out a vision for how companies should follow the mitigation hierarchy to address the climate emergency, informed by science and the Paris policy environment. Here are Gold Standard’s key takeaways for the voluntary carbon market.
Read MoreCOMMENT: Scaling the voluntary carbon markets without sacrificing quality
The TSVCM rightly calls for science-based target setting in tandem with robust carbon offsetting, clear claims guidance for credible communications and broad public support, and long-term corporate commitments and futures contracts to de-risk project development. Yet having sat in Taskforce discussions and observed several emerging instruments that seek to operationalise the forthcoming ‘blueprint,’ Gold Standard’s Owen Hewlett spots several concerns about the quality of what is meant to scale.
Read MoreCOMMENT: How the credibility of sustainable development impact claims can strengthen – or compromise – the voluntary carbon market
The success of sustainable development taking root in the voluntary carbon market has presented both tremendous opportunity and an important risk: SDG washing, writes Owen Hewlett of Gold Standard.
Read MoreMARC(U) MY WORD: The importance of the Article 6 Guidelines to the success of the Paris Agreement
The absence of the Article 6 Guidelines creates uncertainty for the accounting treatment of assets in the emerging carbon market under the Paris Agreement as well as for other related markets. The importance of the international accounting treatment cannot be overstated.
Read MoreCOMMENT: Why low oil prices are good news for the environment, but not for the reasons you may think
Low oil and gas prices are no boon for the climate in the short term, but they give us a window into a future of ever-decreasing fossil fuel demand that may deter expansion an opportunity to put in place policies that get us paying to decarbonise the fossil fuels we dig up, argues Eli Mitchell-Larson of Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute.
Read MoreCOMMENT: Doubling down on climate action in the time of corona
Let this economic crisis not be a brake on the low-carbon transition, but an accelerator. With the Green Deal as a compass, we can marry our emergency spending with structural changes that will prepare us for a greener tomorrow. Because we cannot backtrack on our climate commitments, neither governments nor companies. That is more than crisis management, that is responsible policy, writes Renat Heuberger, CEO, South Pole.
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