Voluntary Nature And Carbon Markets: Key Risks And Practical Considerations For Organisations

Few large companies can meet their public climate commitments on emissions reductions alone.

With most emissions sitting in Scope 3, beyond a company's direct control, credits and increasingly removals have become a fixture of corporate climate strategy. Businesses are increasingly exploring nature-based credits as part of their sustainability strategies. But the legal environment around voluntary credits is likely to become more demanding: evolving disclosure frameworks, greenwashing risks, stakeholder expectations and performance concerns all point to an ever-greater focus on the quality of a credit portfolio.

For in-house legal teams, the question is no longer whether to buy credits, but how to buy them in a way that will survive scrutiny from a regulator, an auditor, a shareholder, a customer, or an employee five or ten years from now; long after the procurement team has moved on and the project has faced its first drought.