In September, we released Version 4 of the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) after more than two years of development work. At a time when the urgency of reducing global emissions and mitigating the impacts of climate change has taken center stage, it was our intent to present much-needed refinements to the VCS Program to ensure its post-2020 success and drive climate action forward effectively and efficiently.

In two webinar sessions on October 17, we walked through the changes to the program and updated requirements and also answered stakeholder questions regarding the release of VCS Version 4. Specifically, we discussed:

  • Our scope revision proposal that will ensure that carbon finance targets those activities most in need of it;
  • Our updated project crediting period requirements that will ensure that projects assess changes to compliance circumstances more frequently;
  • Changes to our methodology approval process that will make it more efficient;
  • Our process for identifying inactive projects that will allow for more transparency to the public about the status of individual projects;
  • For AFOLU projects:
    • The strengthening of our local stakeholder engagement requirements that will continue to guarantee that local communities play a vital role in their success;
    • The introduction of optional default leakage deductions to lessen the burden of ex-ante calculations;
    • Demonstration of activity implementation during each verification to ensure that projects continue to invest and drive change in the project area;
    • An updated process for loss event reporting to ensure transparency around possible reversals; and
  • Our reorganized VCS Program documents and templates.

Below, you can view (and listen to) the materials from this webinar:
1) The recordings of webinar 1 and webinar 2;
2) The slide deck presented during the webinar.

As always, please contact secretariat@verra.org if you have any questions.