What are carbon markets and how do we work with them?
Our commitment to high-quality carbon markets benefits people and nature.
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Our planet faces dual crises: rapid climate change and biodiversity loss. We have years, not decades, to address these existential threats to our ways of life. We must use all the tools at our disposal to create a world where people and nature thrive.
This includes a massive investment in decarbonization—as well unlocking the power of nature through Natural Climate Solutions.
The Nature Conservancy advances Natural Climate Solutions through many strategies, including high-quality carbon markets.
But first, what are carbon markets? Carbon markets are an effective mechanism to encourage and enable forest owners to take voluntary action to improve the health and resilience of their forests for future generations and generate revenue from carbon credit sales. Carbon markets can help companies meet their climate and net-zero goals by investing in natural climate solutions.
The rapidly evolving carbon credit market has the potential, in combination with other strategies, to meaningfully mitigate the impact of greenhouse gas emissions, as well as provide valuable conservation co-benefits for people and nature.
Carbon credits and trading allow difficult to decarbonize industries to reduce emissions immediately while still working toward deep emissions cuts through the development of carbon-free fuels. Research has shown companies that participate in carbon markets invest more and make more progress in reducing their own carbon pollution than businesses that don’t participate in carbon markets.
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We must use all the tools at our disposal to create a world where people and nature thrive.
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Global carbon markets, like other technologies and tools, continuously improve over time thanks to science and innovation.
When it comes to our own participation in the market, we have established new internal quality requirements that, alongside leading third-party certification standards, inform our project development process. All TNC carbon projects now must meet or exceed our new quality bar and complete at least two project design reviews by TNC experts, in addition to the existing third-party auditing that is already mandatory.
We are also committed to learning from doing, responding to criticism and acting when necessary. We won’t always get things right the first time and that’s okay. What’s important is that we learn from our experiences and move forward better and stronger.
In 2021, TNC conducted a thorough review of our carbon portfolio. In several cases, we identified project attributes that, though they met the rules of the applied standard at the time of development, did not align with our newly developed internal criteria for creating high-quality carbon credits. We applied a more conservative approach to these projects, resulting in lower carbon credit issuances.
In one case, we determined that the project, though valuable from a conservation standpoint, does not meet TNC’s new, internal criteria. So, we have worked with stakeholders to cancel all carbon credits previously issued from the Pennsylvania Ridges project, none of which had previously been used by any company, individual, or government for any climate claim. This is all part of the process of learning, acting and improving.
With more than 20 years of experience pioneering natural climate solutions and carbon projects around the world, TNC is uniquely positioned to understand this evolution and use our experience to advance best practices.
Our Commitment to High-Quality Carbon Markets
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Oversight
Formed a Global Carbon Markets Team that provides robust oversight over all our carbon markets work.
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Standards
Established a set of standards to guide decisions about when and how to establish carbon projects of the highest quality.
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Carbon Credit Accounting
Developed new approaches to improve how benefits of carbon projects are measured, such as dynamic baselines, which improve carbon credit accounting in forest carbon projects. Learn more about dynamic baselines.
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Accelerator
Launched a Natural Climate Solutions Accelerator to support a new global portfolio of projects that demonstrate best-in-class science, biodiversity conservation, and inclusion of communities and Indigenous peoples. Our goal is to support projects like the Emerald Edge.
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Industry Influence
Reflecting our interest in market leadership, we want to influence industry standards by engaging with initiatives like the Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity Initiative (VCMI) and the Integrity Council for Voluntary Carbon Markets (IC-VCM).
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Vetting Carbon Buyers
We only work with companies that have a credible path to net-zero or a strong track record of climate commitments.
California Assembly Bill 1305 – Voluntary Market Disclosures (AB 1305) requires an entity that is marketing or selling voluntary carbon offsets within the state of California to disclose specific information about the credits that are being marketed and the projects that generate those credits. Relevant information for credits marketed by The Nature Conservancy can be found here.
Please note that this information is not intended to include all details about projects and may be subject to change as the projects or interpretations of AB 1305 requirements evolve.
Our Carbon Projects
The Nature Conservancy has been a pioneer and leader in implementing carbon projects for over 20 years, with projects located in several countries. These are just some of the carbon market projects we support.
The Science of Carbon Markets
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Carbon Markets, Illustrated
Even though carbon markets could create much-needed incentives for faster climate action, they are often misunderstood.
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Natural Climate Solutions
Natural climate solutions are conservation, restoration and improved land management actions that increase carbon storage or avoid emissions.
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Dynamic Baselines
This methodology compares the carbon sequestered on lands enrolled in a carbon program to a control group of highly similar forests not enrolled in the program.
Our Insights on Carbon Markets
Read expert perspectives on the cutting-edge science of climate solutions.
Campbell Moore and Peter Ellis share how a new vision of the voluntary carbon market can help the world reach critical climate targets.
TNC's response to the Integrity Council for Voluntary Carbon Markets Core Carbon Principles, a global benchmark for high-integrity carbon credits.
The Nature Conservancy, TerraCarbon and partners are launching a new scientific collaboration to test and compare REDD+ impact measurement approaches.
New data layers make a reforestation mapping tool even more useful for showing lower-cost, feasible options for restoring forests in the U.S.
With just 10 years to prevent catastrophic climate change, we have a moral imperative to harness the potential of carbon projects.
As part of ambitious decarbonization plans, offsetting is a near-term solution to closing the emissions gap.
We can't reach global climate goals without cutting emissions—but we can't reach them without nature either.
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