Sinclair Vincent, senior director of Sustainable Development, Program Development and Innovation at Verra, explains Verra's work on the Sustainable Development Verified Impact Standard and its plans for the forthcoming Nature Framework.
Environmental Finance (EF): How does Verra envision SD VISta and its evolution will address the growing complexities of sustainable development?
Sinclair Vincent (SV): The Sustainable Development Verified Impact Standard, or SD VISta, is Verra's programme that certifies sustainable development benefits generated by carbon or non-carbon projects. Projects in the voluntary carbon market contribute so much more than climate change mitigation, and there are also many activities outside of the carbon market generating sustainable development benefits that are not fully quantified. With SD VISta, we're hoping to bring further standardisation to how sustainable development benefits are quantified and reported.
EF: How does Verra's new SD VISta Nature Framework fit into Verra's work?
SV: Verra develops and manages standards for a sustainable future. We can't have a sustainable future without conserving the world's remaining intact nature and restoring what has already been degraded. The Nature Framework is a set of rules and requirements, including a quantification methodology for projects that want to certify the positive biodiversity outcomes resulting from conservation and restoration activities. These activities and outcomes contribute directly to the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including SDG 14 – Life below water and SDG 15 – Life on land. They are also likely to contribute to other SDGs.
At a minimum, all projects that use SD VISta and the Nature Framework must demonstrate a net positive impact. That means projects must evaluate all their project activities, and their direct and indirect impacts – intended or unintended, positive or negative. If there is a risk of negative or unintended impacts, projects must establish appropriate mitigation measures and ensure all risks are managed over the lifetime of that project.
EF: By January 2025, all active VCS projects must demonstrate contributions to at least three SDGs. Why is this?
SV: The voluntary carbon market is much more than a mechanism for reducing or removing carbon emissions, it is about both climate action and sustainable development. In fact, climate action is just one of the 17 SDGs. So, while we must take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts in line with SDG 13, if we don't do that within the broader context of sustainable development, we may risk the long-term benefits and permanence of climate action that we set out to achieve in the first place. That's why we require SDG contributions by all Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) projects.
Most projects can easily describe and quantify how they contribute to a sustainable world beyond reducing or removing emissions from the atmosphere. These 'beyond carbon' benefits were going largely unreported by projects using the VCS Program, which is a shame because they are a significant part of the story that buyers and investors should be aware of.
EF: You have been dedicated to strengthening safeguards at Verra. Can you tell us about Verra's safeguards and how this is a requirement at the project level?
SV: Safeguards are one of the most important elements of our programmes. While the social and environmental safeguards and the VCS Program have been updated several times, we must continue to raise the ambition behind those requirements. It can be really challenging and costly for projects to determine which safeguard requirement is relevant to their project activity and then how to design the appropriate mitigation measures to address each relevant risk.
We are working to help projects understand the relevant risks based on their activity type and their project context, such as the geography. This can be done through updates to our standards and the underlying requirements, but also through the development of tools to help implement and design projects.
EF: How does SD VISta align with global frameworks like the UN SDGs, and what role does it play in advancing these goals?
SV: SD VISta's purpose is to certify projects that demonstrate how they are advancing the SDGs and delivering benefits for people, their prosperity and the planet, in accordance with the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The Nature Framework, which is nested within SD VISta will also help projects demonstrate their contribution toward the UN Global Biodiversity Framework and its targets.
EF: What can you tell us about the release of the Nature Framework?
SV: The Nature Framework is an SD VISta asset methodology, which projects can use to generate standalone units, or nature credits that certify and incentivise investment in measurable, positive biodiversity outcomes benefiting nature and people. The Nature Framework provides a methodology for projects to account for change in the ecosystem condition due to restoration and conservation activities. Positive change generates nature credits on a per-hectare basis. Although nature credits cannot be used to offset direct negative impacts elsewhere in the ecosystem or in the world, the credits can be purchased by investors as a positive investment in nature.
We have been developing the Nature Framework since early 2022 along with multiple stakeholder groups and following extensive public consultation processes, including several consultations to engage with and learn from Indigenous Peoples and local communities who steward a large majority of the biodiversity around the world.
This first version of the Framework will be available for use only by our existing 30 pilot projects selected from a pool of 180 applicants last year and around half plan to submit their project documentation following the launch at COP16 in Cali, Colombia.
EF: How could nature credits be a potential new revenue pathway for Verra projects under the new VM0048 REDD Methodology?
SV: Nature credits can provide an additional revenue stream for many nature-based carbon projects. Nature finance can be a helpful financial source for REDD projects that may see a reduction in the amount of climate finance that they can generate under the new VM0048 methodology. Nature credits can also be a viable pathway for projects that have never had access to climate finance, but need finance to restore or conserve nature, including some threatened intact nature.
EF: What role do you see technology, such as remote sensing or AI, playing in the future of monitoring and verification for Nature Framework projects?
SV: Technology like remote sensing, bioacoustics and eDNA is rapidly evolving and will be a really good resource for projects. These projects track multiple indicators that, when combined, represent the broader ecosystem but with significant measurement burden. Hopefully, these technologies will reduce that burden. It will take some time to bring the cost down, but I think that will happen as the technology gets better and gains more traction.
EF: What is your vision for the future of the Nature Framework? How will you develop it further?
SV: We expect to see the first nature credits issued in 2026 or 2027, at the latest, and believe that within five years we will have the start of what could be a very powerful finance mechanism for nature conservation and restoration. As far as the Framework is concerned, we want to keep learning and evolving our approach because we recognise that what we're doing is new, critical, and rapidly evolving.