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Recommendations for the Digital Voluntary and Regulated Carbon Markets BRIEFING PAPER MARCH 2023 Contents Images Getty Images © 2023 World Economic Forum. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system. Disclaimer This document is published by the World Economic Forum as a contribution to a project, insight area or interaction. The views expressed in this paper are those of the members of the Working Group on Blockchain Carbon Credits as part of the Crypto Sustainability Coalition, listed below, and not necessarily those of the World Economic Forum or its Members, Partners or other stakeholders. Introduction 1 Challenges facing carbon markets 2 Recommendations for the next generation of digitally native carbon markets 2.1 Improvement of governance 2.2 An accessible marketplace, product definition and clarity 2.3 Applied technology for radical scalability 2.4 Interoperability and transparency across exchanges and platforms 3 The time is now Contributors Acknowledgements Endnotes 3 4 5 5 6 6 7 8 9 9 11 Recommendations for the Digital Voluntary and Regulated Carbon Markets 2 Introduction In order to meet the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting the global temperature increase to below 1.5°C, it is necessary not only to reduce carbon emissions quickly but also to continuously remove and store existing and future excess atmospheric carbon dioxide. This will require a broad array of mitigation activities, including a transition away from fossil fuels, emissions reduction programmes and carbon emissions offsetting through carbon credit markets. 1 At their core, carbon credits are a financial technology that enables capital to flow towards a variety of direct, verifiable actions for mitigating the impact of the changing climate. Many jurisdictions manage carbon crediting for organizations and municipalities via regulatory bodies these are regulated carbon markets, while much of the private sector participates increasingly in voluntary carbon markets. In this paper, “carbon markets” refers to both. Carbon markets have come under heavy criticism for their lack of transparency, accessibility, equitability and quality. Despite broad corporate interest, they also remain underused and fragmented. Along with this criticism, and the growing demand for effective and high-quality carbon credits, there is a renewed enthusiasm for applying emerging technologies and new approaches to expand the reach, credibility and scalability of carbon markets. However, significant work still needs to be done. This paper touches on the myriad challenges facing current carbon markets and suggests an ambitious path forward so that they can deliver positive long-term environmental, social and economic impact. Innovative technological and social infrastructure play equal roles in enabling the next generation of digital carbon markets. This paper focuses on emerging forms of distributed ledger technology DLT and their applicability to carbon markets, although this is just one of the many technologies needed to fully enable a digitally native carbon market. DLT allows carbon credits to be represented as universally unique data entities in a digital end-to-end environment. Doing so makes it possible to verify a credit’s provenance, track its secondary exchange and retire it permanently, without the need for centralized intermediaries. Recommendations for the Digital Voluntary and Regulated Carbon Markets March 2023 The lead authors of this briefing paper are Evîn Cheikosman, Director, Blockchain Law for Social Good Center, University of San Francisco; Policy Analyst, CISA, World Economic Forum, USA 2020–2023; Josh Knauer, Co-Founder, ReSeed.farm; Lauren Serota, Advisor, Funga. Recommendations for the Digital Voluntary and Regulated Carbon Markets 3 Challenges facing carbon markets 1 These are the biggest challenges to be overcome 2 Lack of transparency, integrity and confidence in the monitoring, issuance, sale, retirement and benefits distribution of carbon credits, as well as in third-party certifications Without auditability and visibility into the supply chain, it is difficult for buyers to make informed decisions. This is where blockchain technology could play a role, although systems that use blockchain still rely on data from legacy systems and can be difficult for non-experts to audit and understand. 3 Many current verification bodies have opaque and outdated processes and have been slow to integrate new technologies that could help scale the entire onboarding and verification process. One result is that carbon buyers have a hard time determining the quality of the credits they are purchasing, and so they manage reputational risk by hiring intermediaries, who drive up costs and have no incentive to make changes and adopt emerging technologies. This stifles market activity and makes it even harder to meet climate targets. The lack of a standardized terminology for describing carbon credits makes it hard for potential buyers to compare credits from different sources and confidently purchase without the help of intermediaries. The use of the term “token” rather than “credit” in the blockchain industry has only added to the confusion and has raised regulatory concerns. Inaccessibility, inequity and lack of participation in carbon markets by women, local communities, smallholder land stewards, Indigenous people and other vulnerable populations Concentrations of power and vulnerabilities to corruption undermine the credibility of carbon markets. Participation is prohibitively expensive and operationally intensive, making it difficult for even well-funded carbon projects to get off the ground. The high costs associated with legacy carbon market participation mean that billions of smallholder land stewards globally are excluded from the market. 4 Despite clear guidance from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC 5 on social and environmental justice standards, credits brought to market rarely have any socioeconomic impact data associated with them. While inclusion of these majority populations requires fundamental shifts in business practices and governance, such engagement and equitable distribution of corresponding carbon credit revenue could be automated, documented and monitored using a blockchain. Insufficient scale to meet climate commitments Current measurement, reporting and verification MRV methodologies are numerous, require significant manual work, are slow to follow and measure against and are often redundant. Many methodologies for the collection, analysis and distribution of data remain non-digital and lack machine-readable auditability. The lack of a clear value structure and methodological inclusion of other ecological and socioeconomic factors – such as biodiversity, watershed protection and community impact – make it even harder to create meaningful impact given the current market dynamics. Recommendations for the Digital Voluntary and Regulated Carbon Markets 4 Recommendations for the next generation of digitally native carbon markets 2 Governance of carbon markets refers to the processes and mechanisms by which carbon credits are issued, verified and traded. Governance can have a significant impact on the effectiveness and credibility of carbon markets and their overarching objective of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and promoting sustainable development. Good governance of carbon markets requires tenets of transparency and rigour of data, meaningful inclusivity and diversity in participation, as well as flexibility and scalability of processes. Promote inclusive, equitable and transparent governance. Healthy environmental systems need healthy human systems. To enable better-informed decisions and address the complex challenges posed by climate change, governance must be inclusive, flexible and multidimensional at all levels of engagement. This includes technological flexibility – governance must support inclusive, informed and transparent participation, both online using technologies such as smart contracts and video conferencing and offline e.g. community roundtables and other community education efforts. It is critical to include provisions for equitable participation, safeguards to protect whistleblowers and sanctions to punish malicious actors. Governance at scale may require investments in education and including stakeholders to ensure full engagement in the system. Include vulnerable populations and women’s empowerment in governance and benefit sharing. Including vulnerable populations 6 and promoting women’s empowerment in carbon market governance processes ensures equitable decision- making and distribution of benefits, enhances the credibility and viability of carbon projects and minimizes the negative consequences of design by isolated industry players and systems. To encourage transparent and inclusive governance of carbon credit projects, it is necessary to ensure equitable representation of land stewards early in the design and implementation process, as well as in the creation of policies, programmes and funds. Build local/global capacities for participation, and industry capacities for understanding. Incumbent power structures have excluded diverse perspectives, by design or through ignorance. Facilitation of diverse voices needs more than an invitation. It requires investment, the provision of tools and information to bring all representatives to the same baseline of understanding on varied topics, from the complexities of carbon markets to the intricacies of Indigenous land practices. Improvement of governance2.1 The following pages detail recommendations for developing a next-generation carbon market infrastructure that powers a more efficient and transparent environment for project developers, local populations and buyers alike. For each recommendation, there is an outline of what is required and why. There is also an analysis of the potential for specific applications of DLT to facilitate coordination of global and diverse stakeholders, and the activities required to see large-scale climate impact from the carbon market. Recommendations for the Digital Voluntary and Regulated Carbon Markets 5 Effective markets can create the conditions for the emergence of dynamic and adaptable products to solve the challenges facing diverse stakeholders. But this functionality is possible only if purchasers can effectively distinguish signal from noise. Bringing this clarity to carbon products requires reducing obstacles, redundancy and confusion while streamlining and defining the underlying benefits to climate and society. Ensure carbon markets adopt a common baseline taxonomy to provide clarity. Carbon credits should have standardized and detailed labels to enable ease of understanding and comparability. 7 Important non-carbon attributes, such as achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, 8 including enhanced biodiversity and meaningful community benefits, should be clearly defined and easily identifiable. Expand carbon markets to include efficient price discovery and the creation of innovative new financial products and “beyond-carbon” tradable assets including factors such as biodiversity, social value and Indigenous rights. Digital carbon credits can expand the market by trading on open and accessible exchanges that highlight the auditable data-backed differences among the credits. This promises to remove the considerable friction and uncertainty surrounding buying and selling credits that currently exists, to increase visibility for price discovery and make it easier to fund the market’s expansion. Use an “end-to-end” digital environment, including DLT, to enable efficient data capture, analysis and auditability. 9 Using technology-based data collection tools such as digital decentralized measurement, reporting and verification MRV, and making such data available in an open-source and human-readable format e.g. on a blockchain-based ledger with a non-technical interface, can resolve challenges associated with trust, transparency and interoperability in current systems. This can lead to enhanced confidence in the market, better and more seamless participation for both sellers and buyers and greater scale. Digital carbon credits can enable unique demand- side use cases. Everyday purchases can more easily and credibly have the cost of their emissions baked into their purchase, as seen already with airline bookings and some e-commerce platforms. Industries can integrate the retirement of digital carbon credits directly into their operations so that emissions are compensated for in real time, rather than on a quarterly or annual basis. An accessible marketplace, product definition and clarity 2.2 This is an unprecedented time in terms of the capability and abundance of sophisticated technologies. Using available and affordable emerging technologies such as near-field communication devices and robust LIDAR satellite imaging, it is possible to scale innovations in digitally representing real-world assets with integrity. Use digitally native credits to support more automation in validation and verification. The immediate advantage of digitally native 10 credits over their past iterations is a reduction in the overhead expense through a credit’s life cycle. Machine readability and automation further contribute to the streamlining of processes. One example is the translation of protocol documentation into a standard set of data points, enabling the monitoring of protocol adherence via a combination of data feeds such as satellite imagery or internet of things IoT sensors rather than relying solely on consultants from a validation and verification body physically visiting the project site. Ensure better use of emerging technologies. Technologies such as advanced remote sensing, artificial intelligence and machine learning and IoT sensors, incorporating auditable records written by DLT, are examples of combining emerging technologies, tools and modelling to help achieve scale. For example, blockchains and smart contracts can support MRV as a coordinated and repeatable effort across a diverse group of sensors and stakeholders. Reduce friction and increase connectivity between buyers and sellers. Digitally native carbon credits improve the verifiability and transparency of credit information by providing an immutable record of credit provenance, as well as attaching credit metadata, such as verification reports, in machine-readable formats. Connecting buyers more directly to sellers reduces the number of intermediaries needed in Applied technology for radical scalability2.3 carbon credits can enable unique demand-side use cases Digital Recommendations for the Digital Voluntary and Regulated Carbon Markets 6 the marketplace, thus removi