From Jeff Seale

New York is the perfect place to hold climate week. What better place than one with such a rich diversity of people from all over the world for climate activists from across the globe to meet and tackle the world’s most pressing problem? Add the native New Yorker’s “get out of my way I’m going somewhere!” approach to daily life and you have all the ingredients to really try to make progress. Here are a few takeaways from our time in New York:

In spite of the current global turmoil, there is still real work being done to mitigate climate change. Over 100,000 people don’t show up for over 1000 events across a week without there being sufficient interest and effort in working on a problem. Across the sessions that we attended, there were real examples of how groups are working collaboratively to drive projects at scale. It was heartening to see that there are companies out there that are willing to push the boundaries to try to make a difference. For us, that took the form of PepsiCo releasing their current report that is one of the first to report progress outside the physical inventory on some of the newly developing “alternative ledgers.” It is imperative that we continue to think innovatively about how we can tackle the barriers we see in pushing climate action.

The Land Sector and Removals Standard (LSRS) removes excuses for inaction. Over and over again we heard that we now have the roadmap for taking action and despite its perceived or real limitations, we know what we need to do to reduce the emissions in our value chains. At the same time, we also know where the new questions on what to do and how to do it lie. Not only does LSRS provide a roadmap for what we are to do today, it provides a roadmap for needed future innovations in measuring, accounting, and reporting. With the publication of the LSRS, other organizations like the Science-based Targets Initiative are building upon their previous work and the LSRS help companies determine how to take action. The new SBTi Corporate Net Zero Standard is giving companies greater flexibility in making practical progress toward net zero. SBTi will be releasing an update to their Forest, Land and Agriculture Guidance (FLAG) that will incorporate the LSRS and provide more commodity pathways for the sector to set targets and measure progress against their net zero goals. While we often may see standards as barriers to our efforts, these new initiatives from the standards give us the needed tools to build and scale programs with tangible results.

Market Based Instruments (MBIs) are coming, the good and the cautionary. There were several sessions that mentioned Market Based Instruments. In general, Market Based Instruments are financial instruments that are used to incentivize, account for, contract, transfer, and claim some desirable attribute or outcome. For the purposes of regenerative ag programs, these attributes can be greenhouse gas outcomes, carbon removals, or other environmental outcomes (water, biodiversity, etc.). MBIs are a contractual obligation between parties for the creation, transfer, and accounting of environmental attributes. They can take the form of carbon credits, environmental attribute certificates, commodity certifications and more. Guidance is currently being developed on using MBIs for corporate reporting to account for activities that may fall outside of the current LSRS and reported on alternative ledgers from the physical inventory. This is creating buzz in the sector because it may be a tool to allow companies to take more action since there are ways to get actual “credit” for the efforts. Anything that increases action and ambition is a good thing. However, it was pointed out in the Value Change Initiative’s public event on MBIs that we need to be very cognizant of the need to build in safeguards that ensure the credibility of these MBIs to avoid claims of greenwashing that the added scrutiny that these alternative ledgers will naturally create.

Reporting assurance is going to become even more critical. With the LSRS, new SBTi-FLAG, and MBIs becoming more integral to corporate action. Good guidance is not overly prescriptive, this includes LSRS and SBTi-FLAG. But this flexibility may create ambiguity when a report is being audited by non-experts. This creates two additional obligations for those of us in the sector. First of all, as mentioned above, we need to create and follow the appropriate safeguards to ensure the highest level of integrity of the outcomes that we generate. Second, those of us in the sector have an obligation to educate those stakeholders who will be providing the third-party assurance, especially the accounting firms that typically audit corporate inventory reports. Hopefully there will be sufficient momentum in the sector to convene the appropriate venues to help create assurance that will give everyone confidence in the outcomes that companies report.

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