Verra, the world’s biggest certifier of carbon credits, plans to review projects faster than it has in the past despite letting a quarter of its workforce go after losing $9 million last year.
Introduced this week, Verra’s new “risk-based approach” uses algorithms and staff judgement to categorise carbon credit projects by how risky they are based on factors like size and complexity. Projects deemed high-risk are now checked more thoroughly than low-risk ones.
While Verra’s new CEO Mandy Rambharos said recently that “faster does not equal to compromise on integrity”, carbon market experts have raised concerns that the quality of verification could suffer and more bad projects could get the green light.
Verra is also implementing as “digitalisation” initiative, which it says will help “enhance transparency and efficiency, streamline processes and scale up its operations”.
Digitally-submitted documents about a project will be fed into a “built-in engine” that “performs all the necessary calculations”, including working out how much greenhouse gas will be kept out of the atmosphere as a result of the project’s activities, according to Verra.
Losses fuel cuts
Over the last few years, Verra has been repeatedly accused in academic studies and media reports of approving carbon offsets that exaggerate the climate benefits they bring by reducing or avoiding the release of planet-heating carbon dioxide and methane.
Its long-time CEO David Antonioli stepped down in March 2023 amid falling revenues – which Verra gets mostly from taking a cut on the sale of credits – and rising costs. The carbon credit registry made a loss of $9.3 million last year.
Rambharos, a former South African climate negotiator who joined Verra from the Environmental Defense Fund, told a webinar for partners last week that the job cuts had been a very “difficult decision” in a “gruelling week”.
Justin Wheler, who heads the program management team that runs Verra’s registry and is responsible for ensuring the quality of credits, told the webinar that his department had lost staff as “no department was spared from that”.
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In response to questions asking how projects could be processed faster with fewer staff, he said the new risk-based approach would “compensate for the reduction in staff capacity” as it “clearly identifies where high levels of scrutiny are needed and allows us to focus our resources in those areas”.
Wheler added that the criteria Verra uses to judge project risk would not be released, comparing that decision to police not telling the public where speed cameras are. But he said the size and complexity would be two of the factors guiding “review intensity”.
Past mistakes
There are a number of known cases of Verra approving carbon credit projects only to later place them under review after media reports or whistleblowers raised doubts over their integrity.
Last August, the carbon credit standard revoked 37 rice cultivation schemes after it had identified a string of “serious failures” during a 17-month review triggered by complaints over the production of credits in excess of actual emission reductions.
Other projects have been suspended by Verra after campaigners raised concerns about Indigenous peoples’ lack of consent for a project in Cambodia, and sexual abuse and harassment in a project in Kenya. Both activities were restarted after Verra had reviewed them.
Just last week, Verra cancelled 5 million credits generated from cleaner cookstoves after a former executive at the project developer – who was also a former member of Verra’s board – was accused of fraud by US law enforcement over the alleged falsification of project data. He denies all wrongdoing.
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Trishant Dev, carbon markets researcher at the Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment, said Verra’s new risk-based approach “warrants careful consideration […] given recent instances of Verra placing projects under review after discrepancies are exposed publicly”.
Simon Counsell is an independent consultant and researcher who wrote a report criticising a Verra-approved carbon offset project in Kenya. He told Climate Home that given the criticism Verra has received, it is “surprising that they should think there are ‘low or medium risk’ new projects that warrant less scrutiny, especially when inadequate oversight is precisely what has led to Verra’s current financial situation”.
“‘Streamlining’ its processes might get new projects online quicker, and thus bring in more registry fees, but it won’t solve its credibility crisis,” he said, adding that Verra is branching out into “new and even more controversial areas” such as biodiversity and nature crediting. “It seems that ‘more’, rather than ‘better’, is still the organisation’s main watchword,” he said.
Joe Eisen, executive director of Rainforest Foundation UK, said it was difficult to see how the reforms “won’t further undermine the credibility of the system”.
“We have a situation where there are far more projects in the pipeline, less people to ensure the quality of the projects and greater commercial pressures to issue credits from them,” he added. “Not an ideal recipe for high-integrity forest protection.”
Carbon players’ support
A spokesperson for Verra pushed back against criticism, however, telling Climate Home the new approach acknowledges some of the different risk factors from different types of projects. For example, he said projects that rely on gas measurements from a meter are different to large land-based projects, where monitoring is more difficult.
The spokesperson added that the risk-based approach had been in development for “some time” and would “help mitigate the impact of the reduction in [staff] forces, but that is not the purpose of it”. The goal, he said, is “to focus the reviews where the risks are to reduce wasted time and increase scrutiny on the key issues”.
Sustainability consultant and carbon offset developer Chris Hocknell told Climate Home the changes were “desperately needed as delays in response and review times are a significant challenge for projects”.
He said the digitalisation is “a valuable enhancement” which “upgraded a surprisingly analogue system into digital, which is merely bringing things up to date with modern business”.
This will allow project developers to concentrate on “outcomes rather than admin”, he added.
But Hocknell said he feared that cuts to staff could slow down project review times – and that the decision to keep the risk-based approach’s criteria undisclosed “raises concerns, as developers lack insight into the specific standards or thresholds being applied”.
Clean-up job
Following the spate of critical media articles, there are several high-profile efforts underway to improve the integrity of the voluntary carbon market.
The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM) gives a stamp of approval called the Core Carbon Principles to categories of projects regarded as high-integrity.
In August, it rejected existing carbon offset methodologies that are based on building renewable energy capacity. The body said those standards were not strict enough on judging whether the projects needed the funding generated by selling carbon offsets in order to go ahead – a key threshold known as “additionality”.
Another organisation called the Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity Initiative (VCMI) aims to ensure that the buyers of carbon offsets only make accurate claims about their use and are transparent about the offsets they buy.
Felipe de Leon Denegri, a former carbon markets negotiator for the Costa Rican government, told Climate Home he had high hopes that Verra would play its part in this market-wide integrity drive. Having negotiated with Rambharos when she was with the South African government, he said he could not think of “anyone I’d trust more to try to revitalise Verra”.
(Reporting by Joe Lo; editing by Matteo Civillini and Megan Rowling)
The post Verra’s plan to review carbon credits faster with fewer staff raises integrity concerns appeared first on Climate Home News.
Verra’s plan to review carbon credits faster with fewer staff raises integrity concerns
Climate Change
A ‘victory’ for communities as High Court rules climate impacts from coal and gas must be considered even where fossil fuels are exported
SYDNEY, Wednesday 7 October 2026 — In response to the landmark High Court ruling that climate impacts of fossil fuel projects must be considered by NSW planning authorities, the following lines can be attributed to Joe Rafalowicz, Head of Climate and Energy at Greenpeace Australia Pacific
“The High Court decision today is a victory for communities that bear the brunt of the storms, bushfires and extreme weather fuelled by Australian fossil fuel corporations.
“Coal and gas companies have claimed they are not responsible for their pollution because it happens overseas, but today Australia’s highest court sided with common sense and scientific evidence to find that every new coal and gas approval in this country could put us at risk, no matter where it is sold or burnt.
“As leaders meet at the Pre-COP talks in Fiji this week, Pacific communities are reaffirming the importance of the 1.5C temperature limit as a survival line for humanity, and is a scientific, moral and legal obligation as affirmed by the landmark Pacific-led ICJ Advisory Opinion. The highest court in the world, and now in Australia, have been clear: it is legally imperative that all of the pollution from fossil fuel projects be considered before approving a new project.
“Now is the moment for the Australian Government, as COP31 President of Negotiations, to find the courage, leadership and grit our country is known for to chart a new course away from fossil fuels. This begins with showing leadership at home by ending new coal and gas approvals.”
-ENDS-
After witnessing the effects of sea-level rise in the low-lying island nation of Tuvalu, Pacific leaders on Tuesday used the pre-COP31 summit in Fiji to voice their frustration at the difficulties they have experienced in tapping the global climate finance system.
A small group of government leaders, climate negotiators and heads of development banks and climate funds took a trip to Tuvalu’s Funafuti atoll on Tuesday morning, travelling by road over land just 10-20 metres wide to visit a project that is building barriers to keep the sea from the land.
They then flew to Fiji for the pre-COP summit, where several Pacific leaders said they had been let down by the insufficient quantity, bad terms and slow speed of international finance to help them adapt to a warming climate that is bringing higher oceans, drought and more powerful storms to their shores.
“Right now, our islands are like a canoe that has been rammed by a massive foreign ship. Our canoe is taking on water, we are sinking, and what is the world’s response?” asked Palau’s President Surangel Whipps Jr.
“They hand us a tiny patch to cover a gaping hole,” he continued, “but the bureaucratic process just to receive that patch is so slow that the water fills the hole while we wait. Then to rebuild the vessel so that we can survive the next storm, we are offered loans, debt that adds weight to a sinking boat packaged in red tape so thick we can barely access it. And while we wait, the water continues to fill.”
Pacific leaders and Australia called again on governments to invest in the new Pacific Resilience Facility (PRF), which has been designed by the Pacific Islands Forum and is seeking $500 million in investments by COP31 in November.
It has around $180 million so far, but did not receive additional pledges during the UN General Assembly in New York. The PRF aims to invest to generate annual returns which it can give to projects like water tanks for drought-hit communities.
Witnessing sea level rise
The annual pre-COP gathering is usually a low-profile technical meeting of climate negotiators. But this year, Australia – which is the president of negotiations at COP31 – partnered with the Pacific to introduce a “leaders segment” in an attempt to shine a spotlight on climate issues affecting the region.
Fourteen government leaders – from Australia, Timor-Leste, Mauritius and the Pacific – made the trip. They were joined by the European Union’s climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra, the heads of the Green Climate Fund and the Asian Development Bank and former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard.
On their return to Fiji, Solomon Islands Prime Minister Matthew Wale told the pre-COP leaders roundtable that the sea level rise they had witnessed was personal for him.
“Tuvalu was not just a site visit for me. I saw the story of my own saltwater people,” he said, adding that he, his daughter and his grandfather had lost their houses to sea level rise and that three-quarters of his electorate live on land that will be underwater in the next 30 years.
From the other side of the world, Antigua and Barbuda’s environment minister Michael Joseph said Tuvalu’s problems felt similar to those of his own Caribbean islands. “I saw vulnerable communities… just metres from the sea and people determined to remain on their land, preserve their culture and way of life,” he said.
A group of Fijian schoolchildren told the leaders it was not just sea level rise the Pacific struggles with but also heatwaves, droughts and storms, which worry their families and prevent them from learning.
Climate finance red-tape
Several Pacific leaders criticised the world’s leaders for not doing enough to combat climate change. Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown expressed disappointment that only two non-Pacific leaders had come to the pre-COP, a fact Australian media widely picked up on to label the event a flop and question its A$20 million (US$14m) price tag.
“We’ve heard a lot of numbers these last two days,” Brown said. “Let me share one of my own. More than 50 invitations extended to world leaders… to see for themselves what high emissions are doing to our nations and our ocean – an ocean that covers nearly one-third of the Earth’s surface.”
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He called for more climate finance for the Pacific, asking “if the world is prepared to assess our suitability for climate finance, why is it not equally prepared to scrutinise whether those responsible for delivering it are meeting their obligations?”
Like Palau’s president Whipps, Naoero’s President David Adeang criticised the red tape that is hindering access to climate finance as well as a lack of money, complaining especially about “complicated procedures, heavy reporting, delays in approval and disbursement”.
Adeang added that “the way we assess vulnerability matters”, adding that it should be measured by more than income. Naoero, for example, is classified by the World Bank as high-income, restricting which climate finance it is eligible for.
Action plan to improve access
On Thursday, the Australian government will present a statement and action plan on improving access to climate finance for small island developing states and least developed countries, which it is asking other countries and organisations to endorse.
The statement addresses some of these Pacific complaints as well as acknowledging that progress has already been made on simplifying access by multilateral development banks and climate funds.
In Fiji, Asian Development Bank head Masato Kanda said his institution is “tailoring our finance and operations to island realities” because “your children and their children should be able to grow old in the countries their ancestors have called home for millennia”.
The executive director of the Green Climate Fund (GCF), Mafalda Duarte, said that the GCF-backed coastal adaptation project leaders visited in Tuvalu shows that “climate finance works” although – as the project took eight years to implement – “it takes time, and therefore we have no time to waste”.
Australia calls for optimism
While Pacific leaders expressed concern that the world is set to blast past its agreed 1.5C warming limit, endangering their nations, Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called for “optimism”. “If people think there is no hope, then they will not strive to get the change that we need,” he said.
He said that when he attended his first COP in 2005, Australia’s renewable energy target was 2%. Its target is now 82% renewable electricity by 2030.
While Albanese promoted Australia’s success at electrifying homes and businesses and rolling out renewables, he has been criticised by climate campaigners for extending the production of fossil fuels, including coal – largely for export.
France’s Minister for Ecological Transition Monique Barbut defended the European Union’s climate action at the pre-COP meeting. She said the continent was heating up and reducing emissions faster and providing more climate finance than anywhere else in the world.
“It is time for all major emitters to step up and do their fair share” on climate finance, she said. Most developing countries with large emissions have fiercely resisted joining the club of climate finance donors, arguing they have played a disproportionately small historic role in causing climate change.
Barbut, as well as Palau’s president Whipps, called for the next flagship scientific assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to be finished by COP33 in 2028, in time to inform the next global stocktake of national climate action.
This timeline has been opposed by countries like India, Saudi Arabia and China, who argue it would put an unfair burden on developing countries. Barbut said countries should “support the work of the IPCC rather than sabotage its calendar”.
Barbut said that governments should agree at COP31 to aim to raise the share of “clean electricity” in final energy consumption to 35% by 2035. The Turkish and Australian governments have pushed for this goal although without specifying that the electricity should be “clean”. Barbut added that COP31 should also agree to cut emissions of methane, a particularly potent greenhouse gas.
The post Pacific leaders rail at climate finance failures after pre-COP trip to Tuvalu appeared first on Climate Home News.
Pacific leaders rail at climate finance failures after pre-COP trip to Tuvalu
Jacynta Fa’amau is a Pacific campaigner at global grassroots climate movement 350.org and a secretariat member of Pacific Climate Warriors.
The first thing that struck me was the sheer size of Queensland’s Saraji coal mine. Standing at the edge of the enormous pit, my brain scrambled for words as I scanned the earth’s open wound – a whole island could probably fit inside it.
Looking down, I noticed footprints of an emu and a koala, pressed and dried in what was once a puddle – signs of how drought had driven animals in desperate search of water, so dangerously close to the coal trucks and heavy machinery ahead.
Earlier this year, I joined a small group of Pacific Islanders on a journey through the Bowen Basin to learn from First Nations communities battling Australia’s mammoth coal industry. Of the more than 40 coal mines operating in the area, BHP & Mitsubishi Alliance’s Saraji mine is one of the largest. So it came as a painful shock to us when in August, the Australian government approved the mine’s extension just months after our visit.
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Witnessing coal extraction is devastating. It is bad enough to see what pillaging tonnes of coal can do to a mine’s immediate surroundings: dry creek beds, dwindling wildlife, denuded land. But to kn