Agricultural carbon finance projects: Can they be sustainable?

Abstract

Agricultural carbon schemes are purported to constitute a ‘triple win’ for sustainable development. Practices such as agroforestry, reduced tillage, and grasslands management can increase yields and improve resilience while mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and providing revenues through the sale of carbon credits. Scaling up carbon credits involves complex institutional structures for promoting practices and aggregating carbon monitoring, reporting and verification. Scaling occurs across three scales of analysis: micro, meso, and macro. This presentation focuses on an analysis of the meso scale, where multiple levels of intermediaries are involved in governance and management. In the case of most agricultural carbon schemes, an external organization functions as a higher-level intermediary while pre-existing local associations are enrolled as lower-level intermediaries. Two case studies are evaluated based on stakeholder engagement, market linkages, and the generation and use of carbon revenues. This evaluation leads to questions which serve to guide evaluation of the sustainability of agricultural carbon finance projects.