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With the right public policies allowing business participation, Indonesia has an opportunity to benefit from international sales of carbon credits and become a net exporter of abatements. One of the ways to issue carbon credits is through voluntary efforts – or voluntary carbon projects. 

Critically, ‘high integrity’ means these projects ensure transparent operations, ethical methodologies and practices, and measurable, verified outcomes for their climate and environmental value to be realised.

Recently in Indonesia, projects, companies, investors and project developers have been procuring land concessions for future voluntary carbon projects – with financial motives to monetise lands rather than using it to compensate for residual, unavoidable emissions. Additionally, capacity barriers among decision makers and corporate actors over inflate the perceived monetary value of carbon projects. Most importantly, critical actors on voluntary carbon projects still lack the capacity to understand the essence of environmental and social integrity for carbon projects, as only high-integrity carbon credits are attractive in the market. 

To ensure the integrity of a voluntary carbon projects, regulations are needed to: 

• establish clear engagement strategies with existing carbon projects 
• discover the ways voluntary carbon projects can contribute to Indonesia’s nationally determined contribution
• create enablers to mobilise carbon finance 
• ensure that a Free Prior Informed Consent (FPIC) mechanism is implemented, to safeguard local communities – and especially Indigenous peoples – from bad business practices.

This project seeks to identify the critical mechanisms that promote wider understanding of the need for environmental and social integrity across voluntary carbon projects. It will also provide pointers to decision makers to understand how voluntary carbon projects can contribute to the national climate contributions and Paris Agreement temperature goals, and allow them to incentivise high integrity voluntary carbon projects in Indonesia. 

Our goal is to drive system change that moves Indonesia towards high integrity voluntary carbon projects, particularly through nature-based solutions (NbS).

What we’re doing

The Indonesia Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM) Integrity project will scope, convene, and develop pathways to ensure the integrity of voluntary carbon projects in Indonesia.

The Indonesia VCM Integrity project will: 

• Bridge the knowledge gap by adopting and disseminating accessible voluntary carbon market knowledge material and by producing a comprehensive report detailing the state of play of the voluntary carbon market in Indonesia.
• Build and nurture relationships with key stakeholders to highlight the role of voluntary carbon projects towards achieving the national and Paris Agreement 1.5 C goal, and the importance of integrity systems as an enabler for voluntary carbon projects, through hosting a series of knowledge dissemination and focused group discussions. 
• Assemble a collective integrity pact on voluntary carbon projects, particularly from nature-based solutions (NbS).

This program is led by Climateworks Centre in collaboration with Climate Focus on their Voluntary Carbon Market Primer.