Carbon Finance Co-Lab Brown Bag with Open Forest Protocol

The voluntary carbon market is facing a challenge in establishing its integrity, which is critical for the market-based system to scale and for capital to flow to quality carbon projects. To address this challenge, initiatives like the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM), the Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity Initiative (VCMI), and the Africa Carbon Markets Initiative (ACMI) are developing principles to guide carbon MRV. These principles are critical for standardization, quality measurement, and spurring the growth of the VCM. 

In this Brown Bag session, we spotlighted Open Forest Protocol's recently released white paper to understand their data collection, verification, and value-creation system.  Open Protocol is a scalable open platform that allows forest projects of any size from around the world to Measure, Report, and Verify (MRV) their forestation data.

During the session moderated by Jane Del Ser (Principal Consultant, BFA Global & Carbon Finance Co-lab Co-lead, CIFAR Alliance), the panelists Jeremy Epstein (Head of Growth, Open Forest Protocol) and  Luke Schubert ( Head of Product, Open Forest Protocol ): 

• Provided an overview of their methodology and approach

• Unpacked how the design of their approach ensures quality carbon and transparency and any trade-offs made to balance transparency with scale

• Reflected on the outstanding issues closing the gaps in the supply and demand for the VCM to grow and have an impact on climate vulnerable people

Watch the recap of the session below