Readout of White House Roundtable on Enhancing the Voluntary Carbon Market for Nature-Based Solutions

Earlier this week, the White House convened a roundtable with key stakeholders to discuss opportunities to advance high-integrity voluntary carbon markets for nature-based solutions.

The roundtable brought together practitioners, innovators, investors, and Administration officials. Participants discussed the state of play, public-private partnerships, and opportunities to enhance nature-based solutions and high-integrity voluntary carbon markets. Administration officials and participants agreed that voluntary carbon markets can drive significant progress towards our climate goals. Participants shared perspectives on subnational action, demand signals, and risk management.

The discussion also highlighted the opportunity for these markets to create new revenue streams for landowners in rural communities across the country. Participants identified and discussed opportunities to support innovation, improve incentives, and ensure fair and equitable treatment of potential participants. Administration officials closed the roundtable by underscoring the Biden-Harris Administration’s commitment to advancing the responsible development of voluntary carbon markets, with clear incentives and guardrails to ensure that the market drives ambitious and credible climate action and economic opportunity.

The generational investments of the President’s Investing in America agenda have created a historic surge of private capital, and high-integrity voluntary carbon markets have the potential to further support organizations that are developing and deploying projects to reduce carbon emissions and remove carbon from the atmosphere. The Biden-Harris Administration believes that these investments must create economic opportunities across America – from farms and forests in rural communities, to innovative technology companies, to historically-underserved entrepreneurs. The roundtable built on the joint statement of policy and principles for high-integrity voluntary carbon markets, which sought to strengthen this market and enable voluntary carbon markets to deliver on their potential.

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