condemnation<\/a> of this sector. \u201cThe voluntary carbon market has received a lot of criticism and most of justified frankly,\u201d says Luik. \u201cThere have been projects that were over crediting, where the baselines were set artificially low and essentially tonnes were being spun out of thin air. That damaged the trust that the broader public has in this market.\u201d<\/p>\nBut flawed as it might be, the voluntary carbon market is still the best marketplace mechanism we have for emission reductions right now, she argues. \u201cGovernments are not on the track to get super strict and regulate the emissions away, and pure philanthropic action is nowhere near the levels we need. The voluntary market still has a role to play mostly because we haven\u2019t come up with a great alternative. I would rather use a flawed tool than no tool at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
The EU\u2019s Carbon Farming framework, officially the Carbon Removals and Carbon Farming (CRCF) Regulation, aims to create a standardised approach to measuring and verifying carbon sequestration, is also helping. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a huge step forward in terms of increasing trust in the market,\u201d Luik says, \u201cbecause you have top level rules in place and it\u2019s going to give buyers the confidence that if they buy a credit under that they know what they\u2019re getting.\u201d<\/p>\n
She compares things to the stock market in the 1800s in the US where you could buy a railway stock without knowing if that railway existed. \u201cBut you can\u2019t buy fake stocks anymore and the same thing is happening in the voluntary carbon market. We are moving from the Wild West to a world where things are much more proven.\u201d<\/p>\n
Better technology is also helping to create better afforestation projects, she believes. \u201cHistorically you would use tape and count the trees to measure a forest. Now we have satellites, we have lidar so we don\u2019t rely on human-error driven processes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Arbonics now operates in six countries \u2013 Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Scotland \u2013 and claims to have seen strong growth in the last three quarters. Afforestation projects are appealing to landowners who have historically had few diversification opportunities, bar cutting down trees to sell for timber. <\/p>\n
Afforestation does however take five years before significant amounts of carbon can be removed. Landowners like the idea of growing more forest but they need that financial incentive, Luik says. \u201cWe see potential to unlock another pool of landowners if we could unlock some funding for them.\u201d<\/p>\n
A growing carbon credit market presents opportunities for agtech providers<\/p>\n
A separate report from Oxbury Bank \u2013 the UK\u2019s only agriculture dedicated lender \u2013 agrees that thanks to a surge in interest from corporates, demand for nature-based solutions currently outweighs credible and measurable supply. <\/p>\n
There are \u201csubstantial\u201d income opportunities available farmers, landowners and land managers, the lender claims. \u201cNature is bankable,\u201d said Nick Evans, managing director of Oxbury Bank. \u201cWe want farmers to understand the opportunities and the size of the demand from nature services.\u201d<\/p>\n
But market growth will depend on addressing the credibility and measurability challenges. Greater technical support, financing, and market infrastructure are all needed to help farmers and land managers develop projects that can generate high-quality, verifiable credits. <\/p>\n
Both the Arbonics and Oxbury reports stress the importance of integrating technological solutions (such as digital monitoring and remote sensing) and clear methodologies to bridge the gap between demand and credible supply.<\/p>\n
A growing and flourishing carbon credit market therefore presents compelling opportunities for agtech providers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"European corporates are showing a strong willingness to pay a premium for high-quality, nature-based credits to meet rapidly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":251847,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[2000,299,5187,97062,97063],"class_list":{"0":"post-251846","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-european","11":"tag-fungicide","12":"tag-seasonlandscape"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114825568645168666","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251846\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/251847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}