Carbon project developers call for complaints procedure overhaul
The voluntary carbon market, which lets companies buy credits to offset their emissions, has been under growing scrutiny, with many environmental groups saying it generates "junk" credits that allow firms to "greenwash".
But industry advocates say complaints about projects, which have in some cases led registries such as U.S.-based Verra to stop them from generating credits, are causing unfair damage to the sector as a whole and holding up vital sources of funding for environmental and climate initiatives.
The Project Developers Forum, which represents more than 60 carbon projects from Kenya to Singapore, said current complaints procedures do not offer an effective way for developers to defend any alleged wrongdoing before it is made public.
"You see a lot of projects getting suspended and it becomes public very quickly," the forum's chair, Nick Marshall, told Reuters. "Integrity is non-negotiable, but how we surface and respond to allegations matters just as much."
Marshall also said a few bad actors were doing undue damage to the industry's reputation and that developers with knowledge of wrongdoing tended not to come forward because the whistle-blowing procedure was not sufficiently anonymised.
He said the group has asked leading registry Verra to develop a clear policy and secure submission form on its website which would allow information about possible integrity issues to be shared anonymously.
Verra told Reuters in a statement it has had a formal and robust process in place for submitting complaints since early 2024 and that it "already contains provisions that address the concerns that the PD Forum has raised".
Last year, Verra rejected as many as 37 low-emission rice cultivation projects located in China following a quality control review.
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