Few efforts to tackle climate change have garnered as much scrutiny and criticism as carbon markets. A quarter-century has passed since their inception in the Kyoto Protocol, and even now, not everyone in the climate space is convinced they have done more good than harm. Even ardent proponents would concede that carbon markets are nowhere near maturity.

If you are a skeptic, read on. We, at Native, share your critical view of current carbon market institutions and practices. We see all the same problems, the scandals and the market failures. In fact, they are precisely why Native exists. 

Resolving these issues is not simply a matter of taking the same model and adding a few extra layers of certification. That would be, as Albert Einstein warned, to try and solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.

Rather, Native reimagines nature markets from the foundations up, introducing fresh perspectives and a different approach. With decades of experience across the climate sector —  from classrooms to UN negotiations — the Native team have won valuable insights into how they can be transformed to make them more transparent, more fair and more holistic.

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While there are no perfect solutions — only incremental improvements, each with its trade-offs — our approach addresses some of carbon markets' most critical issues. At the same time, advancements in technology such as AI and satellite imaging offer some low-hanging fruit where established players have been slow to adapt.

Our approach represents a significant evolution in carbon markets, such that the term itself becomes somewhat of a misnomer. We prefer "Nature-based Solutions" (NbS), acknowledging the diverse range of terrestrial and marine ecosystems we aim to protect and regenerate with our area-based strategy. 

This isn’t just about efficacy, it’s sound marketing. It’s very hard to get inspired by a tonne of invisible, odorless gas. There’s no way to see it, track it, nor even to conceptualize the difference it makes. On the other hand, a pristine rainforest or a teeming coral reef evokes wonder and inspires action. Its value and preciousness is intuitively obvious, and it can be seen with satellite imaging. Hence transparency — giving buyers something real and tangible which they can see for themselves so they can be confident about the claims they make.

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Secondly, we believe that indigenous communities and their wisdom hold the key to reversing the climate and biodiversity crisis. Indigenous communities steward 80% of the world’s biodiversity and yet receive less than 1% of climate finance. Hence fairness — by placing indigenous communities at the heart of everything we do from design to execution, by lowering barriers to entry so they can access markets, and by ensuring they benefit from 90% of the revenue from primary sales, we can empower them to steward our most precious and biodiverse regions well into the future.

And thirdly, our ambition extends beyond the myopic focus on carbon alone, and the similarly two-dimensional concepts of “carbon neutral” and “net zero”. To value a rainforest only for its carbon is the perfect example of our left-brain biased civilisation at its most reductive. Our answer to this is holism — to move past misguided attempts at objectivity and the overemphasis on single metrics, and instead to embrace nuance, complexity and subjectivity. To integrate, not all, but at least more, aspects of what an ecosystem is and to value it accordingly.

Because however cognisant we are of nature’s intrinsic value - markets are simply not equipped to read and process this kind of “warm data”. Short of overhauling the entire market economy, our next best option is to approximate nature's worth, enabling its consideration in market decisions. It is an unfortunate truth that markets tend to manage what they can measure.

If we can get this right, then the potential for capital mobilization to benefit the planet is staggering. Barclays projects that voluntary carbon markets could be worth $250 billion by 2030. The We Mean Business Coalition estimates that if 1,700 top-emitting companies offset just 10% of their emissions, up to $1 trillion could be mobilized within the same timeframe.

Time is running out; this is our last best chance to get this right.  If these funds are channeled through broken, corrupt and inadequate carbon market mechanisms and questionable technology-based carbon removal, while the destruction of nature continues to gather pace, then humanity’s future is bleak and short. Conversely, if we direct these resources toward safeguarding the world's most biodiverse regions and empowering indigenous communities, we could meet the UN's goal of protecting 30% of marine and terrestrial habitats by 2030 and carve a sustainable path forwards for humanity.

Native is not, ultimately, a vision of the ideal world we would like to live in. But it is, hopefully, a significant step along the way.

Robert Cobbold, CEO of Native