Toitū Envirocare moving out of NZ carbon creditsFriday 1 Dec 2023
This strategic shift aligns with the evolving standards in the global Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM), as they no longer meet the latest international best practice, especially amid heightened demand for integrity and transparency in carbon credit projects. The transition will commence in early 2024, once the new best practice becomes operational. Toitū Envirocare Chief Science and Advisory Officer Dr Belinda Mathers said, “We appreciate the importance of supporting New Zealand based projects, and historically these projects have been accepted as suitable quality, but market expectations for carbon credits have changed. While there are excellent indigenous forestry projects in Aotearoa, the NZ schemes that issue carbon credits are not being assessed by the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (IC-VCM), against the quality requirements, so cannot show that they meet expectations. We conducted a thorough review of options for continuing to use the New Zealand credits, but none are yet suitable for meeting best practice”. Both the carbon credit projects (PFSI and PP89) were set up for permanent forest carbon credit projects for the NZ Emissions Trading Scheme, the Government’s regulatory compliance scheme aimed at reducing national greenhouse gas emissions. Its standards are designed to meet specific national policy goals and legal requirements. In contrast, the VCM, where Toitū operates, adheres to different, more stringent, standards. These are guided by international best practice and emphasise aspects such as transparency, global applicability, and additional environmental or social benefits. Toitū Envirocare’s decision is to ensure it can remain aligned with the latest international best practices, market expectations, and provide the highest levels of international recognition and transparency to NZ businesses. Toitū Envirocare follows international best practice as set by the ICVCM, the independent global governance body for the VCM. It is their latest guidance established as a global standard for carbon credit quality that defines New Zealand carbon credits as no longer meet the quality requirements. The New Zealand carbon credit programmes (PFSI and PP89) are government owned and were primarily developed for selling into the compliance-based NZ Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). At this stage there is no intention for the PFSI and PP89 to get assessed. As a result, projects under these schemes cannot be approved as ICVCM compliant, even if they individually meet the criteria. More >> Source: Scoop | ||
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