Women Organizing for Change in Agriculture and Natural Resource Management (WOCAN) and the W+ Advisory Council released a white paper earlier this week that lays out a solution for addressing the need to scale up the private sector voluntary carbon market and generate gender co-benefits simultaneously by applying a transparent and rigorous methodology.
As a new global initiative, the Taskforce on Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets stresses the need to grow and consolidate the voluntary carbon markets to help meet the goals agreed in the Paris Climate Agreement, the white paper emphasizes that these efforts must incorporate a strong focus on sustainable development and recognize the critical contributions made by women.
The W+ Standard, created by WOCAN, allows projects to certify quantifiable contributions to women’s empowerment. To indicate carbon projects — and the credits they issue — that incorporate such contributions, Verra collaborates with the W+ Standard to allow for the generation of W+-labeled VCUs from projects that are certified to both the VCS Program and the W+ Standard.
The report asserts that “to reach the scale required for fast climate results, we cannot afford to exclude the knowledge, skills, and networks of women by neglecting their contributions to tackle climate change.”
Read the white paper (PDF).
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