London – The Voluntary Carbon Market Integrity Initiative (VCMI) has entered a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to boost carbon market activities in support of the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals.

The collaboration aims to better equip developing countries, indigenous peoples, and local communities to participate in and benefit from high integrity carbon markets. Such benefits include enabling access to finance that can support the achievement and enhancement of climate goals, facilitate technology transfer, and deliver socioeconomic and biodiversity prosperity. 

The partnership builds on previous collaboration between VCMI and UNDP which resulted in the publication of the ‘VCM Access Strategy Toolkit'. The Toolkit was designed to help governments create an enabling environment to unlock carbon markets, mobilising much needed climate finance while maximising the co-benefits of thriving, high-integrity VCMs for their countries. 

This MoU provides a framework through which VCMI and UNDP can effectively coordinate activities to: 

1. Promote high-integrity: Facilitate the development of ethical and equitable carbon finance flows within countries, regions and organisations by scaling up public and private capacities to engage in high-integrity carbon markets.
2. Facilitate market access and build readiness: Assist low- and middle- income countries to access market mechanisms and climate finance investment opportunities, addressing barriers to engagement at both national and sub-regional levels, and streamlining technical support.
3. Build collaborative networks: share and expand networks across the public and private sector to facilitate the scaling up of carbon finance.

Mark Kenber, Executive Director, VCMI comments, “We are excited to be partnering with UNDP to scale up public and private capacity to engage in high-integrity carbon markets in support of the Paris Agreement and Sustainable Development Goals. Carbon markets have a unique role to play in delivering finance to projects on the ground and leveraging other sources of capital, for the benefit of climate, people, and nature. Through this partnership, VCMI and UNDP can leverage their respective strengths to catalyse climate ambition through the scaling of high integrity carbon market finance.”

Marcos Neto, Assistant Secretary General and Director of Bureau for Policy and Program Support, UNDP, comments, “UNDP’s High Integrity Carbon Markets Initiative, launched at COP 28, aims to provide scale-up targeted support to countries and local stakeholders to produce high-quality carbon credits and match them with high quality buyers, as a way to accelerate progress towards the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals. As part of this Initiative, we are happy to announce this partnership with VCMI to raise the bar on integrity of carbon markets across the board, with a vision to make carbon markets work for host countries and their NDCs.”

Strengthened coordination linked to VCMI’s Access Strategies Program and UNDP’s High Integrity Carbon Markets Initiative will support and scale the uptake of high-integrity carbon markets as an enabling tool for sustainable development and the net-zero transition.