Need To Meet Company Net Zero Goals? Be Sure To Choose The Right Tool

This post was written by Mark Moroge, vice president, natural climate solutions at Environmental Defense Fund.

Make no mistake: Providing more finance for tropical forest conservation is essential for stabilizing the climate, advancing sustainable, community-led development, and protecting the plants and animals that make our natural world so diverse and wondrous. Various tools can provide that finance. Many of these are being showcased in Egypt at the United Nations Climate Summit, taking place now.

All the tools in our toolkit have a role to play, so the question becomes: How can I have confidence that what I’ve grabbed fits?

This is the question facing corporate sustainability and carbon procurement officers as they navigate the dizzying array of options streaming onto the voluntary forest carbon market today.

One such tool for tropical forest finance is the REDD.plus platform. It can be a valuable means to channel resources for tropical forest and biodiversity conservation at scale.

However, if you are a private-sector buyer looking to use carbon offsets toward your corporate net zero targets specifically, the REDD+ Results Units, or RRUs, offered via REDD.plus are not the right fit for that job right now.

Why these aren’t the right carbon offsets for your business

Several integrity issues make RRUs unfit for corporate use as carbon offsets to address residual emissions, including:

• No independent standard: RRUs, sometimes referred to as “sovereign carbon credits,” do not follow an independent standard. Adherence to such standards is critical, as they establish the rules and criteria to, for example, ensure proper accounting and environmental safeguards.
• No independent, third-party audit: RRUs are described as following U.N. guidance and verification processes. However, the U.N. does not verify carbon credits. RRUs are self-reported emissions reductions against a self-defined baseline. Because these units don’t follow recognized independent standards, they’re not required to have independent, third-party audits. To simplify, it’s a bit like grading your own test. For all the details, take a look at the recent analyses of REDD.plus from Trove Research and Sylvera.
• Challenges ensuring benefits to Indigenous peoples and local communities: Without such standards and audits, it becomes particularly difficult to ensure that the priorities of Indigenous peoples and local communities are met, and that they get their fair share of benefits. These are the folks who, as guardians of a critical mass of tropical forestlands — including nearly 30% of all land in the Amazon — play an indispensable role in tropical forest conservation and are struggling mightily to achieve just recognition and rewards for their efforts.

How to pick carbon offsets that meet your net zero targets

To meet their corporate net zero goals, companies should consider three fundamental elements of high-integrity tropical forest credits: adherence to rigorous, independent standards; requirements for independent, third-party audits; and ensuring full and effective participation of Indigenous peoples and local communities and their fair-share receipt of benefits.

It’s not always easy to differentiate tropical forest credit purchases by high-integrity criteria like these. Fortunately, initiatives like the Tropical Forest Credit Integrity Guide — which incorporate the above and other high-quality criteria — can help companies navigate this complex space.

If your purpose is to use tropical forest carbon credits as offsets to meet your corporate net zero targets, look to high-integrity tropical forest credits, not REDD.plus. Otherwise, you unnecessarily take on reputational risk and could undermine the credibility of the overall voluntary carbon market.

If your purpose is to support tropical forest and biodiversity conservation writ large, you should consider REDD.plus alongside other initiatives as part of your philanthropic or corporate social responsibility spend, and as part of our collective global responsibility to drastically accelerate finance for tropical forest conservation.

Scaling up finance for tropical forest conservation is paramount to the climate fight, and all the tools in our toolkit have a role to play.

We’ve a long road ahead to save our world’s tropical forests and support the Indigenous peoples and local communities who’ve long been the greatest stewards of these lands. Let’s grab the tool that fits the best and get to work.