What Future for Voluntary Carbon Markets?

More and more individuals and corporations have a desire to offset some of their carbon footprint. To satisfy this demand, a host of voluntary carbon standards have emerged.

These standards originated in the Kyoto Protocol. The international legal environment changed with the Paris Agreement, though: now all countries and not only industrialised countries have an obligation to develop and communicate so-called nationally determined contributions.

Thus, the voluntary market faces an "identity crisis": If voluntary standards do not find a way to arrange their activities to the new structures of the different regime architecture, there is a risk of loosing legitimation and credibility.

The new JIKO Policy Brief by Lukas Hermwille and Nicolas Kreibich addresses this challenge in detail and outlines the "identity crisis" in which voluntary carbon standards find themselves in. It is available for free download.