Moving Beyond the Binary: The Evolution of Carbon Markets 

Can the voluntary carbon market (VCM) evolve from a source of skepticism into a high-integrity engine for global climate and nature action? The stakes go far beyond corporate sustainability teams. While emissions reduction across the value chain must remain the top priority, the VCM serves as an essential, complementary mechanism for accelerating global climate and nature action. And as voluntary and compliance markets converge, the VCM is becoming the research and development space for an essential new industry: global carbon removal.  

We are seeing a “flight to quality” in the VCM which is both necessary and overdue. At the same time, many companies are moving away from simple “offsetting” toward a more nuanced understanding of the importance of both mitigation and adaptation, where carbon credits serve as a “last, but not later” contribution in a comprehensive climate portfolio. Carbon markets are showing important progress on transparency and quality. The past years have seen significant strides on all these fronts. The next thing we need is scale. The changes that follow would help VCM actors keep pace, and position them well in the accelerating transition towards compliance markets.  

Reclaiming the Narrative on Nature 

Nature is the world’s most sophisticated carbon sink, capable of providing up to 30% of the mitigation required for a 1.5°C future, according to UNEP. Yet nature-based solutions (NbS) often face high hurdles around perceived durability and reversal risks from wildfires or pests. 

Rather than excluding nature from carbon markets, these risks should motivate better project quality, for example through buffer pools, investments at jurisdictional scale, and a holistic view of quality that goes beyond simple carbon sequestration. High-integrity projects treat social and environmental benefits, such as biodiversity health and community benefit-sharing, not as “co-benefits” but as the “core benefits” of a diverse climate action portfolio.  

A Portfolio Approach 

Addressing climate change requires a diversified portfolio across several pillars. At Salesforce, we invest in nature-based solutions, providing speed and scale; in engineered carbon dioxide removal (CDR), providing long-term durability and the needed early investment for research and development; and superpollutant mitigation, offering the fastest near-term brake on temperature rise. 

In practice, this translates to a set of working principles to maximize our positive impact. We prioritize investment in high-quality nature-based solutions, because of the compelling case of multi-benefits, including for adaptation. For engineered CDR, our goal is catalytic investment rather than bulk procurement, and we have made a first-mover commitment to help the market scale. Superpollutant mitigation fills the gap that limited budgets and the relative cost of NbS would otherwise leave open. Durability, quality, and cost must all be balanced to scale climate action effectively. In this series last month, Sarah Walker asked how to choose well within a portfolio. The answer requires balancing evolving scientific, economic, and social considerations.  

We deliver across all three elements of our portfolio through partnerships and coalitions, such as the Symbiosis Coalition for nature; the Frontier Advance Market Commitment and the World Economic Forum’s First Movers Coalition for engineered CDR; and the Superpollutant Action Initiative for gases with high and immediate climate impact. All these coalitions are open to new corporate members. Additionally, we run carbon buyer workshops in collaboration with the Beyond Alliance for corporates that are new to the VCM.  

Scaling Through the Ecopreneur Revolution 

The market still faces a significant supply gap in high-quality credits, particularly in removals. Bridging this gap requires more than better standards. It requires an “ecopreneur revolution,” facilitating access to capital, including concessional finance, and expertise for thousands of new innovators focused on solving sustainability challenges. Private-public partnerships will be essential for this market to develop at speed and scale. Collective action through buyers’ coalitions and independent rating agencies is essential to reducing complexity and building trust. Increasing project scale, easier access to capital and more cost-effective MRV can bring down the costs of credits further, which is an essential consideration for corporate buyers.  

The Path Forward 

The transition from voluntary to compliance markets is accelerating, and the Paris Agreement is integrating market mechanisms more deeply. Critical questions remain: How do we grow corporate participation as new high-quality supply comes online? How do we avoid leaving behind vulnerable communities least equipped to navigate complex verification requirements? And how do we maintain a balanced portfolio that continues to protect and restore intact nature, even as engineered removals begin to scale? 

The VCM is one important tool in the private sector’s overall climate action toolkit; one that should play an important supporting role alongside rapid decarbonization. Markets are becoming more robust, standards more rigorous, and the imperative clearer. The challenge now lies in our collective determination to act with both speed and integrity.