March 2025 Newsletter

Welcome to Verra’s March newsletter!

This month, we have several exciting organizational and programmatic updates to share, all of which reflect Verra’s unwavering commitment to building and strengthening trusted market-based solutions for the most critical environmental and social challenges of our time.

First, we are pleased to announce the appointment of Marc Stuart as the new Chair of the Verra Board of Directors. Stuart, a founding managing director of Allotrope Partners and co-founder of EcoSecurities, has been a member of the Board since Verra’s inception and brings deep expertise in environmental markets, project development, and investment strategy. We are also excited to welcome Juan Felipe Rengifo Borrero to the Board; please see the full announcement for additional updates.

The past month included several key programmatic highlights:

• Verra’s new cookstoves methodology has been approved by the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM) under its Core Carbon Principles (CCPs) Assessment Framework. This approval reinforces the methodology’s scientific rigor, transparency, and credibility, and underscores that cookstove carbon credits deliver real, measurable, and verifiable emission reductions while improving the lives of millions.
• Verra released a new rice methodology that enables the robust quantification of greenhouse gas emission reductions resulting from improved management practices in flooded rice systems. This methodology can play a significant role in fighting climate change, improving resource use efficiency, and supporting socio-environmental co-benefits.
• Verra launched the first public consultation on preliminary program documents for its incipient Scope 3 Standard (S3S) Program. The program will address the needs of companies seeking to address their value chain emissions and help scale up meaningful climate action in this space.

If you will be at North American Carbon World next week, the Verra delegation wants to connect with you! Our team—Mandy Rambharos, chief executive officer; Scott Greenberg, senior director, marketing and business development; and Jonathon Alcock, manager, supply chain innovation—will be on the ground in Los Angeles.

We also hope you will join us virtually at our next stakeholder update webinar on Wednesday, April 23, at 11:00 am ET. We will share the latest updates on our work and look ahead to our upcoming priorities. Register today (Zoom)!

• Verra Welcomes New Board Leadership
• A New Era for High-Integrity Cookstove Credits as Verra’s Methodology Is Approved by ICVCM
• Verra Releases New Rice Methodology
• Public Consultation on Scope 3 Standard Program

• Connect with Verra at North American Carbon World 2025

Spread across 1.1 million square kilometers in the heart of South America, the Gran Chaco represents one of the most ecologically diverse areas on the planet. Over 60% of Paraguay’s land area is within the Gran Chaco, which suffers one of the highest rates of deforestation in the world. In just the past two decades, 90,000 square kilometers of forest have been lost.

Enter the Corazón Verde del Chaco Project. Every day, people are working to halt the deforestation of hundreds of thousands of at-risk hectares, maintaining the area’s biodiversity while helping the local economy. Developed by Quadriz (external) and registered with Verra’s Verified Carbon Standard Program, the project is a large-scale REDD+ initiative that provides sustainable alternatives to the cattle ranching that has brought about so much deforestation.

If you are part of a Verra-registered project, we invite you to share your story! From milestone credit issuances to moments of community impact, we want to hear what your project has accomplished. We will feature selected stories across our website, on our social media channels, and in future issues of this newsletter.

Interested in participating in this initiative? Please send an email to communications@verra.org with your project ID and a brief description of the impact you would like to highlight.

• Verra’s VCS Program Recognized in Zambian Carbon Market Framework
• Consultation: Module for Reduced Impact Logging in the Republic of the Congo
• RFP: VVB Assessment of Module for Reduced Impact Logging in the Republic of the Congo
• Corrections Issued to JNR Validation and Verification Process
• Consultation: Revision to CDM Methodology for Personal Transportation
• Consultation: Methodology for Grid-Connected Energy Storage Systems

• Webinar recording: Tool for Quantifying Organic Carbon Stocks Using Digital Soil Mapping (YouTube) – March 6
• Webinar recording: VM0051 Improved Management in Rice Production Systems, v1.0 Overview (YouTube) – March 11
• Social media series: “How can a standards program help tackle Scope 3 emissions?” This five-part series provides an overview of why we need a Scope 3 standards program and how it effectively helps address value chain emissions. Take a look and feel free to like, comment, and/or share the posts at the following links: post #1, post #2, post #3, post #4, post #5.

Register today for this year’s quarterly stakeholder update webinars!

• Stakeholder Update Webinar (April 2025) (Zoom) – Wednesday, April 23, at 11:00 am ET
• Stakeholder Update Webinar (July 2025) (Zoom) – Wednesday, July 23, at 11:00 am ET
• Stakeholder Update Webinar (October 2025) (Zoom) – Wednesday, October 22, at 11:00 am ET

Join Verra at Circularity, the premier gathering of professionals advancing solutions for the circular economy (April 29–May 1, 2025, in Denver, CO). Along with other members of the growing circularity community, you will gain insights to move beyond incremental action, catalyze systems change, and accelerate the shift to a circular economy. Register by March 28 to save $450, plus use the code C25V for an extra 10% off. That’s a total savings of over $700 on the Final Rate for the All-Access Pass: https://buff.ly/4a8x3KM.

• Projects Open for Public Comment
• Public Consultations