Report: Integrating a Gender Lens in Voluntary Carbon Markets
Empower Co.’s founder and CEO Rachel Vestergaard contributed to this timely report on how women’s empowerment is critical to the success of Voluntary Carbon Markets. Read the full report here.
VCMs have been growing exponentially, from $300m per year in 2020 to an expected $100 billion per year in 2030. This presents a unique opportunity for VCMs to drive climate finance towards a Just Transition by integrating gender equality and climate outcomes.
Five key takeaways from the report:
Empowerment of women in VCM projects through their participation and involvement in leadership can improve climate outcomes for all, leading to better and more efficient use of resources and more sustainable results.
Historically, women have been under-represented throughout the VCM ecosystem, especially in the global south. This needs to change by ‘opening the VCM door’ widely to women.The massive gender gap in financial flows to women engaged in climate stewardship (including inequitable benefit sharing arrangements, and under-representation in leadership, management, and project owner and developer roles) all need to be addressed so that women can better contribute to the much needed success of the VCM.
There is a growing demand amongst buyers for more expensive higher-integrity carbon credits that meet robust social and environmental standards, including an interest in credits that can prove both that they ‘do no harm’ and also deliver genuine opportunities for women, with transformational stories being particularly engaging.
Demand is greater than supply and all crediting programmes have a role to play by raising their game to the ‘best in class’ with encouragement and technical support to project developers. This can be done through the adoption of specific requirements on gender integration, provision of clear guidance and examples for project developers, and more demanding and robustly collected impact data required before labelling projects as ‘empowering women’.
The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (IC-VCM), Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity Initiative (VCMI), and others involved in market governance and intermediary roles (such as carbon ratings agencies, exchanges, and financial institutions) can all contribute to raising market awareness, demand, and supply of carbon credits that integrate the experiences, voices, and opportunities for women.
This report was commissioned and funded by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) under the ASEAN Low Carbon Energy Programme (LCEP) and written by Sue Phillips (Gender Tech Enterprises) and Olivia Jenkins (Social Development Direct) with contributions, guidance, and support from Smita Biswas (DT Global) and Suzanne Woodman (DT Global).
Special thanks go to Jeannette Gurung (Women Organizing for Change in Agriculture and Natural Resource Management (WOCAN) for her inspiring contributions and innovative work to amplify gender equality impacts in the voluntary carbon markets.
