“Farmers face one of the highest rates of suicide of any occupation.”

That quiet, devastating remark came from a farmer and a fellow panelist at a London Climate Action Week event last week.

It wasn’t part of the script. It wasn’t a policy point. It was a plea. And it stopped the room cold.

"For those of us who work in the carbon market world, for all the numbers we crunch and all the policy issues we dissect, it was a striking reminder: we can’t forget the simple truth that lives are on the line."

If we get this wrong, if we let bureaucracy, distrust, or complacency slow us down, communities will suffer.

This, coupled with driving down carbon emissions, is why high-integrity carbon markets are so important. And it’s why we must do what we can to scale them—quickly.

For years, we’ve defended why these markets matter.

Today, that debate is over, except for those who have yet to propose an alternative to delivering real action, of course.

Thanks to new global guidelines, stronger methodologies, and improved market governance, we’re operating with clearer definitions, tighter accounting, and higher expectations.

The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM), for example, has laid much of that foundation.

The conversation is now changing. Integrity is no longer just the aspiration: it’s the norm.

But what we kept hearing over and over in London is that integrity alone won’t save us.

The main question now is this: How do we scale these markets? Not slowly, but fast enough to meet the climate emergency?

How do we align fragmented systems into a coherent market that works for the planet and the people?

How do we move to secure global momentum?

Reflecting on the multiple panels, conversations, and lightbulb moments in London, I think we need to start here:

1. Dropping the “V” in VCM.

Markets won’t scale without public-private alignment. The voluntary market participants and governments must become co-creators.

This must happen by enabling environments—through regulation, data access, and co-investment—that allow markets to grow with speed and legitimacy.

It was encouraging to see the launch of the Coalition to Grow Carbon Markets (external), led by the governments of the UK, Singapore, and Kenya, and supported by many others, at London Climate Action Week.

The Coalition aims to develop a common set of principles by COP30 later this year to ensure consistent carbon credit use across borders.

We need more and more governments on board for this work.

2. We must unify a fragmented landscape.

Right now, carbon markets operate in silos: by region, standard, and credit type.

That makes it hard to build clarity and nearly impossible to achieve scale.

The ICVCM’s Core Carbon Principles (CCPs) have set the highest bar in the industry for market integrity, and we must ensure that they are reflected across crediting standards to ensure common rules and coordinated action across borders.

Where possible, standardization must be achieved and communicated.

3. The need for focused and compelling communication couldn’t be clearer.

It was quite the eye-opener for me, late last year, when a major media outlet revealed that they didn’t cover carbon markets because they didn’t understand them.

That’s on us.

We need to make clear to governments, companies, buyers, investors, and all market participants not just why they should invest in carbon markets, but how. And we should be unequivocal about the benefits these markets deliver.

We can no longer hide behind the excuse that “it’s complicated.”

Our messages must be sharper, our communications must be clearer, and our processes must be easier to navigate.

4. Technology must be fully leveraged.

There’s one piece of feedback you’ll hear no matter where you work in carbon markets: we need to be faster.

Project registration takes too long. Funding gets stuck in bottlenecks. Developers face complex processes that vary by region and standard. Buyers, especially corporate sustainability and finance officers, face internal pressures. Validation/verification bodies (VVBs) have their own struggles.

Every part of this market is under strain. Everyone is moving, but not always in sync. And when one part slows, the whole system stalls.

From our end, we know that digital monitoring, reporting, and verification (dMRV) is no longer optional. Neither is the digitalization of our methodologies and project tracking.

Technology must be embedded in the market systems.

5. Local safeguards must be more than checkboxes.

Projects can’t succeed without community support and leadership.

That means ensuring free, prior, and informed consent, delivering fair benefit sharing, and respecting Indigenous rights and knowledge systems.

"Communities aren’t beneficiaries of carbon projects: they’re partners. If they’re not on board, the project isn’t credible."

This is why the strengthening of environmental and social safeguards is at the heart of our final stage of implementing version 5.0 of our Verified Carbon Standard.

And ultimately, we must make the systems we have work harder, faster, and fairer.

I said multiple times in London that we must fight with the army we have.

Because if we don’t, we’re not just delaying climate action, but we’re also undermining the trust of the very people this system is meant to serve.

The farmer who spoke in London wasn’t asking for a miracle. He was asking for functionality. For accountability.

For a market that lives up to its potential. Not eventually, but now.

And that’s the task ahead of us.

Not just to prove that carbon markets can work, but to ensure they do.

Mandy Rambharos is the chief executive officer of Verra.