New Zealand Carbon Farming’s Journey into the Voluntary Carbon Market

One of New Zealand’s largest contributors to climate change response, New Zealand Carbon Farming (NZCF), which historically focused on generating carbon units under the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme, decided to explore opportunities within the voluntary carbon market.

With EAS’s two decades of experience in the global voluntary carbon markets, it was a natural choice for NZCF to partner with us in developing New Zealand’s first Voluntary Carbon Standard project. This strategic partnership will help NZCF tap into the voluntary carbon market, which has additional criteria and processes than the regulatory market, enabling local demand for credits suitable to support carbon-neutral claims being available from within New Zealand.

To bring NZCF’s vision to life, we proposed registering select NZCF forests under Verra’s Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) which is a globally recognised and integrity-driven carbon crediting standard, and employed Verra’s VM0012 methodology, specifically designed for transitioning rotational plantation forests into permanent ones.

NZCF’s first voluntary carbon project targets existing pine plantations that were established prior to 1990 and were not eligible to enter into the Emissions Trading Scheme.

The project aims to transition forest established initially for commercial purposes to long-term carbon permanent forest. The management practices including pest management and small-scale poison thinning aim to encourage the transition from pine to native forest over the project life. The management activities aim to provide a permanent carbon sink and increase the biodiversity of the existing monocultural pine plantation.

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NZCF is setting the example by striving to meet the rigorous criteria required for developing voluntary carbon credits.

Our work with NZCF took us to their forest on the North Island of New Zealand, where we observed NZCF’s current management regimes, engaging in discussions on measuring and modelling carbon sequestration to meet the voluntary carbon standard and methodology requirements.

Our team also advised on project management structures and processes required to meet ongoing validation and verification to the standard and designed training programs to build internal capacity to ensure success of the project.

We worked closely with the NZCF to develop the Project Design Document and all associated supporting documentation to progress through third-party validation and verification of the project. The past 18 months of development has been a great collaboration and very rewarding to work towards achieving a first for New Zealand. We are looking forward to completing the validation and verification process.

NZCF shared that, “The NZCF team has been impressed with EAS throughout our journey. Working alongside such a competent team of advisors has been truly fortunate.”

We hope to see others in the industry follow the example set by NZCF by striving to meet the rigorous criteria required for developing voluntary carbon credits. This will ensure that those purchasing credits to offset emissions can do so with confidence, knowing the credits are additional, permanent, and adhere to the integrity principles required by the voluntary carbon markets.

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