A Week in Singapore, and Reinvigoration for Carbon Markets

If you want to understand where carbon markets are heading, there are few better places to look than in Singapore.

Last week, the city hosted a series of events for the world’s leading climate minds: Ecosperity Week, GenZero Climate Summit, Innovate4Climate, Philanthropy Asia Summit, and all the gatherings that surrounded them.

And something shifted during that week. A renewed spring in the steps of those hurrying along the halls and corridors.

For years, the people in the carbon markets have pushed back against the “why not” argument (which is how a leading voice in these markets so eloquently put it).

And in large parts, we’ve collectively dealt with it. Because the integrity architecture, which some doubted could ever be built, is built.

The ICVCM has established what quality means. Independent ratings agencies have given buyers the optional tools to assess credits with real rigor. New methodologies have been stress-tested and peer-reviewed and independently assessed. The social and environmental safeguards the market needed have been fully integrated into programs.

That means we’ve reached a pivot point. Because when you remove the “why not,” you create the conditions for a very different question.

And that question is: why?

Why should serious organizations engage in carbon markets? Why should finance flow here, rather than elsewhere? Why, at this particular moment, does this particular mechanism deserve a place at the center of the climate response?

The answers were everywhere in Singapore last week, and the case put forward was clear: meeting the climate challenge—one that threatens livelihoods, business operations, and economic growth—requires financing at a scale that public funding cannot match. Carbon markets get that financing to where it is needed most, simultaneously delivering decarbonization, community benefits, and socio-economic growth.

Climate finance deployed in the Global South delivers extraordinary impact per dollar.

What I felt last week in the conference rooms, around the roundtables, in the conversations that spilled into the margins of formal sessions, was buoyant optimism.

And not the performative kind, either. The earned kind: the optimism that comes when hard work meets a turning tide.

Interestingly, people who haven’t always been in these conversations were joining in—and doing so more meaningfully last week. The skeptics haven’t disappeared, but they were engaging differently: less to dismiss, more to understand.

That’s a signal worth paying attention to, because it means that the markets are moving on confidence, and confidence translates into demand.

We’re already seeing it in registration and issuance data. The pipeline of quality projects is real, as is the demand for credits. The compliance pull alone—from CORSIA, from Article 6, from domestic frameworks coming online across the world—is creating genuine urgency on the demand side.

However, to quote Nelson Mandela, “I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb…my long walk is not ended.” We still have more work to do. And it’s different work than before.

The integrity question required us to build systems, create higher standards, and establish better oversight.

The demand question now requires something harder: clarity. And right now, we are not as clear as we need to be. If we want demand to follow confidence, we must do better at explaining what we’re offering and who it’s for.

What does “Paris-aligned” actually mean for a carbon credit, for example? After all, this is often conflated with being PACM-aligned, which is not the same thing.

Which buyers need Article 6-authorized credits, and which buyers are operating perfectly legitimately without them?

How do we overcome the bottlenecks that are arising from fragmented processes and that are stifling CORSIA demand?

We have complicated and subdivided this market in ways that sometimes serve precision and sometimes create only confusion.

The market has always been layered. Different credits do different jobs. Nature-based solutions and technological removals are not competitors. Voluntary and compliance markets serve different functions in the same ecosystem. As I’ve said before, we must strengthen an AND market and not continue to pit one thing against the other.

If we can provide clarity and certainty to the market, clearly communicate how our roles harmonize, and say it repeatedly to the audiences who need to hear it, I believe the overall demand will only continue to grow.

Something that I heard during one of the many scintillating conversations last week brought back the reality of why we do what we do.

We were talking about the proliferation of standards and frameworks and labels and criteria (the taxonomy of terms that even insiders struggle to navigate!) and someone said, “The planet doesn’t care about any of this.”

And they were right.

Climate change will continue regardless of whether we agree on reductions versus removals. It doesn’t care about tech-based or nature-based approaches, whether emissions are categorized as Scope 1 or Scope 2 or Scope 3, if an emission reduction occurs under Article 6.2 or 6.4.

One thing matters: the end goal. A stable climate. Thriving communities. A liveable planet.

We have a tendency, in this industry, to mistake the architecture for the objective.

The standards, the frameworks, the governance structures—these are all means. The end is solving for the climate challenge that threatens our livelihoods.

And what gave me renewed hope last week, more than anything else, is that I felt the people in those conference rooms and event stages started to remember that.

Started to ask whether the work we’re doing actually moves us toward the goal, not just whether it ticks the right boxes.

Or, as we like to ask daily at Verra, whether the action we’re taking drives meaningful impact.

That reorientation is the shift that carbon markets have been waiting for.

I felt it in Singapore. I believe it’s real. And I am genuinely looking forward to what comes next.