Source: Environmental Finance
The voluntary market for carbon has “lacked ambition” to break out of its charismatic niche, according to the managing director of The Carbon Neutral Company.Speaking at the Environmental Finance’s Forestry, Biomass & Sustainability 2011 conference on Thursday, Jonathan Shopley said; “The voluntary market is deeply associated with ‘charismatic projects’ and it is trapped in the space of saving the Amazon, saving the rainforest and solving world hunger.
“In trying to build demand, from people who have no other reason other than the fact that they are making a difference in world, we [the voluntary market] have potentially oversold the charismatic nature of forestry projects and voluntary projects. We are out there creating jobs, reforesting areas, addressing health and social issues, and have created an expectation that every project is going to be able to deliver this,” he told delegates.
Shopley commended the Gold Standard – a best-practice methodology for carbon projects – as being effective at meeting societal aims, but claimed the issue of climate change is one of scale. “The smart followers want scale, price, low risk and an opportunity to invest to make an impact on climate change,” he said.
Whilst making reference to the voluntary sector as a “pioneer” which creates structures that "are as scalable as the market allows them to be", Shopley also expressed concern that the forestry market is being challenged by forest bonds and bilateral programmes.
“Policy makers are beginning to feel this is better served by dropping billions of dollars from the World Bank and other large bilateral institutions or national governments,” said Shopley.
Governments need to provide support to the voluntary market, “with guarantees on prices and capacity building in the countries that are generating credits”, he said. The voluntary market has made limited progress in “figuring out how to work with policy makers, governments, and parts of the private sector” in making the sector a force for scale and impact, he added.