For the Sake of the Atmosphere and the Land, It’s Time to Scale the VCM
As of the latest reading at its Mauna Loa Observatory in April 2025, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports that the atmospheric level of carbon dioxide (CO2) has reached 430 parts per million [1]. If NOAA’s data quality control procedures confirm this preliminary measurement, then 430 ppm will mark a new record high, and a concentration that is more than 54% greater than pre-industrial levels. This growing concentration of greenhouse gases (GHG) is of course driven by global fossil fuel emissions, which totaled a record-high 37.4 billion metric tons in 2023, as reported by the International Energy Agency [2]. According to preliminary data and research by the Global Carbon Project, global emissions from fossil fuels once again reached a new record high in 2024 [3]. And that’s just the atmosphere – on land, here in the United States we lost 1.52 million hectares of natural forest in 2024, an area three times the size of the State of Delaware [4]. And each year, we lose an average of 800,000 hectares of U.S. grassland, as estimated by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology [5]. Given this state of affairs, it’s clear that our atmosphere, our ecosystems, and our economy all need a decisive change of course. Carbon projects that utilize nature-based solutions can and do address all three, and they are poised to be rapidly scaled.
Within the manufacturing, services, and knowledge-based sectors of our economy, decarbonization initiatives typically focus on approaches like energy efficiency, fuel switching, electrification, and renewable energy to reduce carbon intensity. While these changes are less applicable for forestry and agriculture, these two key parts of the primary sector have a climate role to play as well via sustainable land use initiatives. Deforestation and loss of grasslands release greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, whereas reforestation and restoration of forest health enable more trees to remove CO2 from the atmosphere as they grow. However, in today’s world, protecting and restoring natural systems face financial barriers to implementation, since extraction and land conversion are typically more profitable courses of action. Thus, many activities that reduce emissions via good land stewardship (i.e., nature-based solutions) tend to go under- and un-funded, despite their resulting benefits to ecosystems, communities, watersheds, and the climate.
Thankfully, thousands of economic actors choose to take responsibility for their residual emissions each year via the voluntary carbon market (VCM) by funding essential activities and projects that reduce emissions and remove CO2 from our atmosphere. There are thousands of these carbon projects around the world, which have been developed by hundreds of organizations. Between the ratification of the Paris Agreement on October 5, 2016 and December 31, 2024, MSCI reports that more than 2.1 billion carbon credits (each representing one metric ton of carbon reduced or removed) were issued on the 12 largest registries in the VCM. Of this total, approximately 305 million credits were issued in 2024 alone [6]. And during the first three months of 2025, Sylvera reports that 55.6 million credits were issued across the major registries in the VCM [7]. Stacked against the current climate statistics already detailed above, this means the progress of the VCM was outweighed by GHG emissions from fossil fuels by more than 122 to 1 in 2024. As corporate climate leaders continue to chip away at their baseline emissions via decarbonization initiatives, and as we continue to await effective public policy, it is clear that carbon projects and the VCM must be scaled further.
The Climate Trust has been funding and developing carbon projects since 1997, and we have learned a lot along the way. With a dedication to the forests and grasslands of North America, as well as to the landowners who care for them, we are continuing to develop projects that make a positive difference both on the land and in the atmosphere. To learn more about how to help us do what we do, please considering purchasing our carbon credits, or reaching out to learn more.
References:
[5]. Map for Grasslands