Singapore has announced that it will buy about US$76.4 million worth of carbon credits from international projects in Ghana, Peru, and Paraguay. The move reflects the country’s growing role in the global carbon market and its strategy to meet national climate targets. The credits will come from nature-based projects such as forest conservation and reforestation, which reduce or capture greenhouse gas emissions.
The government stated:
“These projects aim to reduce carbon emissions from deforestation, increase carbon sequestration of soil organic carbon stock in grasslands through sustainable management practices, and remove carbon emissions through the reforestation of degraded pastureland.”
Buying Carbon, Growing Climate Impact
The carbon credits will be bought through agreements signed under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement. This article allows countries to trade emission reductions across borders.
Investing in projects abroad helps Singapore reach its climate goals. It also supports other nations in funding sustainable development.
The total contract amounts to S$104 million (US$76.4 million), or about 2.175 million tonnes worth of credits. These credits will come from projects that protect rainforests, restore damaged land, and capture carbon in nature. Each credit represents one metric ton of carbon dioxide reduced or removed from the atmosphere.
Officials have emphasized that all credits must meet strict quality standards. Projects need to show that emission reductions are real, measurable, and verified by independent groups. They must also show benefits for local communities and biodiversity.
Why Singapore Is Buying Carbon Credits
Singapore is a small, urban country, ranked as the world’s 57th-biggest emitter by Global Carbon Atlas. It has little space for renewable energy or big nature projects. The nation is investing in solar power, efficiency measures, and new technologies. However, it still can’t meet its climate targets on its own.
Carbon credits allow Singapore to close this gap. By supporting projects overseas, the country can compensate for emissions it cannot cut at home. Officials have stressed that credits are not a substitute for domestic action. Instead, they are a way to complement local measures and move faster toward climate goals.
Singapore has pledged to cut emissions to 60 million tons of CO₂ equivalent by 2030, down from about 52 million tons in 2021, and to reach net zero by 2050. Buying high-quality credits is part of that plan.
The Role of Nature-Based Projects
The credits Singapore will buy focus on nature-based solutions. These include protecting forests, restoring ecosystems, and preventing land degradation. Such projects are critical because they deliver both climate and social benefits.
Forests, for example, absorb carbon dioxide while also providing habitat for wildlife and resources for local communities. Reforestation creates jobs, improves soil health, and supports water cycles. Protecting land in Ghana, Peru, and Paraguay keeps these benefits going. It also helps avoid emissions from deforestation.
Analysts say nature-based credits are among the most popular in the voluntary carbon market (VCM). In 2024, they made up over 40% of global credits traded. They often sold for higher prices than energy-related credits.
Nature-based avoidance credits, mainly from REDD+ forest projects, are expected to see higher demand in 2025, per S&P Global analysis. However, prices will likely stay low, mostly under US$5 per ton. Despite growing corporate interest, buyers remain cautious and unwilling to pay more without stronger proof of credit quality and stricter standards, keeping prices steady.
Singapore’s Hub Ambition in Carbon Markets
The global carbon market is growing quickly. The VCM was valued at about US$2 billion in 2024 and could reach US$50 billion by 2030 if demand keeps rising.
Compliance markets, such as the European Union’s Emissions Trading System, are even larger. Singapore’s early participation positions it to benefit from this growth and to shape global standards.
Singapore has positioned itself as a regional hub for carbon trading and finance. In recent years, the country launched the Climate Impact X (CIX) exchange, a platform for trading high-quality credits. It also signed bilateral carbon credit agreements with countries such as Papua New Guinea, Bhutan, and Morocco.
Partnerships Stretching Across Continents
Singapore’s US$76.4 million purchase from Ghana, Peru, and Paraguay is part of a broader plan. This strategy aims to create a strong network of carbon credit partnerships under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement. These deals focus on getting high-quality credits. They also aim to boost climate cooperation and keep environmental integrity.
A key milestone was the Implementation Agreement with Ghana in May 2024. This agreement sets the rules for generating and transferring credits. It also required that 2% of credits be canceled at issuance and 5% of proceeds be directed toward Ghana’s climate adaptation.
In August 2025, Singapore signed its first transfer agreement with Thailand, its first such deal in Southeast Asia. This opens the way for Thai mitigation projects to supply credits for Singapore’s climate targets.
In September, a request-for-proposal boosted activity from four projects in Ghana, Peru, and Paraguay. They have support from GenZero, AJA Climate Solutions, Boomitra, and Mercuria Asia Resources.
Beyond these deals, Singapore is working with Bhutan, Chile, Vietnam, Papua New Guinea, and Rwanda on new agreements. These partnerships strengthen Singapore as a carbon market hub. They also direct funding into global climate action.
Through this growing network, Singapore is positioning itself as a trusted player in global carbon markets. It also supports partner nations in attracting funding for climate and conservation projects.
Benefits for Host Nations and Their Communities
For Ghana, Peru, and Paraguay, the deal brings funding for sustainable development. Forest protection projects often struggle with limited resources. Selling credits helps these countries pay for activities like patrols against illegal logging. They can also fund community programs and build infrastructure to support conservation.
Carbon finance also creates jobs in rural areas. Planting trees, restoring land, and managing conservation areas all require local workers. Communities can gain from revenue-sharing programs. These programs can help schools, health care, and water access.
By linking their projects to Singapore’s market, these countries gain more visibility and credibility. This can attract further investment from other governments or private companies seeking high-quality credits.
Global Signals From a Small Island Nation
The deal shows how international carbon markets are starting to scale. Under the Paris Agreement, countries can trade credits to meet national targets. This allows funds to move from rich countries with few natural resources to those with big forests and ecosystems.
Experts say such cooperation is essential. Meeting global climate goals will require both deep domestic emission cuts and large-scale protection of natural ecosystems. Carbon markets provide a way to finance the latter.
Singapore’s move could inspire other small but wealthy nations to follow. If successful, the model may become a blueprint for how developed economies can support climate action in developing regions while also meeting their own goals.
The purchase also boosts Singapore’s role as a carbon market hub and highlights the rising importance of international carbon finance. Credit quality and long-term effects remain a challenge. However, strict standards help this deal show that global partnerships can boost climate action and support sustainable development.
The post Singapore to Buy $76.4M Worth of Nature-Based Carbon Credits appeared first on Carbon Credits.
For most businesses, the emissions that matter most sit outside their own walls. Scope 3 emissions, everything generated across your value chain, from the suppliers who make your inputs to the customers who use your products, typically make up the majority of a company’s total carbon footprint. Under the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), those value-chain emissions now have to be measured and disclosed with a rigour that spend-based estimates alone struggle to satisfy. This guide sets out how to improve Scope 3 data accuracy for CSRD: the calculation methods open to you, how to move from estimates to verified supplier data, and how to govern that data so it holds up to audit.
A carbon credit is a commitment that extends well into the future. The tonne of CO₂ compensated for today from a nature-based carbon project must remain out of the atmosphere for good, which means the forest behind the credit has to remain standing long after the transaction is complete. For any buyer, this raises a defining question: What ensures that the forest endures?
What replaced the cheap REDD credit on the boardroom slide deck, and why procurement is leading the rewrite.
Three years ago, a corporate slide showing a portfolio of cheap REDD+ credits could carry a board meeting. The number was big, the price was low, and the press release wrote itself. Today, that same slide gets sent back with questions. The questions are uncomfortable, the answers are unclear, and your general counsel is suddenly in the room.
Conventional carbon offsets are not dead. The voluntary carbon market retired 202 million tonnes in 2025, and the Morgan Stanley Institute for Sustainable Investing survey published in January 2026 confirmed that interest from corporate buyers remains substantial. What changed is the credibility threshold. The integrity floor has risen, the disclosure scrutiny has tightened, and the buyer profile has shifted. This article tracks what changed, what sophisticated buyers now ask before signing, and what serious corporates are putting on the board slide instead.
What boards used to buy, and why it stopped working
The 2020 to 2022 model was simple: buy a large tranche of avoidance credits at low single-digit prices, retire them against the company footprint, announce the carbon-neutral claim, and move on. Most of those credits came from REDD+ projects, renewable energy installations in countries where the renewable energy was already economic, or methane projects with thin documentation.
Several things broke that model. Academic research published in 2023, including a widely cited Science paper, found that the majority of REDD+ credits issued under the most common methodologies did not represent additional reductions when tested against rigorous counterfactuals. The Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity Initiative published its Claims Code of Practice, which sets requirements for what companies can credibly claim from credit use. The European Union finalised its Green Claims Directive, restricting how companies can describe products as climate-neutral. France’s Décret 2022-539 already restricts carbon neutrality advertising. California’s AB 1305 imposes disclosure requirements on any company making net-zero or carbon-neutral claims while doing business in the state.
The collective effect: the cheap credit no longer buys the announcement, and the announcement now carries litigation risk.
The integrity reset: ICVCM, VCMI, and what changed
The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market published the Core Carbon Principles in 2023 and began assessing methodologies against them in 2024. The first methodologies received the CCP label later that year. The point of the label is to give corporate buyers a defensible quality screen they can cite in disclosure.
The Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity Initiative complements this on the demand side. Its Claims Code of Practice defines what a buyer can say (Silver, Gold, or Platinum claims, with associated requirements) based on the quality of credits used and the underlying decarbonisation strategy. Together, CCP and VCMI build a quality stack: CCP on the supply, VCMI on the claim, with the science-based target sitting underneath both.
The reset is not a ban on offsets. It is a ratchet. Credits that meet the new bar continue to clear; credits that do not, do not. The Morgan Stanley survey found that 61% of current buyers like the CCP label concept but that supply of labelled credits remains limited. That supply constraint is now visible in pricing.
What sophisticated buyers ask before they sign
The questions on the procurement scorecard have changed. A 2022 buyer might have asked about price, vintage, and project type. A 2026 buyer asks five different questions before any of those.
- What does the counterfactual look like, and who validated it.
- What is the permanence regime, and what is the buffer pool exposure.
- What is the leakage risk, and how is it mitigated.
- What rating has the project received from the independent ratings agencies (Sylvera, BeZero, Calyx Global), and what was the rationale.
- What is the documentation discipline that survives an audit four years from now when the procurement team that signed the contract has moved on.
If the vendor cannot answer those five questions on a first call, the conversation ends. Conversely, if the vendor can answer them with documented specificity, the conversation often expands beyond a single transaction toward a multi-year engagement.
Where this leaves your near-term commitments
You probably have near-term commitments that pre-date the integrity reset. Public targets to be carbon neutral by 2025 or 2030. Product-level claims that ran in last year’s marketing. Disclosed reduction trajectories that assumed continued access to cheap credits.
You have three workable paths. The first is to re-baseline your strategy, replacing the most exposed credits with higher-quality alternatives and adjusting the public language to match what you can defend. The second is to shift the underlying spend from offsetting outside your value chain to investing inside your value chain, where reductions count against Scope 3 directly and the audit trail is cleaner. The third is to keep the strategy and absorb the risk, which is increasingly the most expensive option once you price in litigation, restatement, and reputational exposure.
Most serious buyers are choosing the second path. It moves the carbon spend from a compliance cost to a procurement and resilience investment, and it removes the central failure point of the legacy model: the disconnect between where the emissions occurred and where the reductions sat. Nature-based supply chain investments, structured under the GHG Protocol Land Sector and Removals Standard and aligned to the SBTi FLAG Guidance, are the asset class that fits this brief. They generate inventory-grade reductions, they produce audit-grade documentation, and they survive the new claim restrictions because the carbon math sits inside the value chain that the disclosure already covers.
If you are reassessing a carbon strategy under the new integrity bar, or rebuilding a board narrative that has to survive a more skeptical audience, the carbon and sustainability experts at Carbon Credit Capital can help. The Dual-Value Model gives you a defensible alternative to legacy offset purchases, with the documentation and operational integration that survives the procurement scorecard and the audit. Schedule a consultation.
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