🪙Index Carbon Assets

Blue Carbon Credit- BCC

One method of slowing climate change impacts is to incorporate coastal wetlands into the carbon market. The oceans and coasts have natural mechanisms to reduce the impact of GHG on our atmosphere. For example, sea grasses, mangroves, and salt marshes all act as a "carbon sinks" due to their ability to sequester carbon. Subsequently, these carbon offsets are called Blue Carbon, as blue alludes to the color of the ocean.

According to a 2019 Sustainable Ocean Economy report, protecting and restoring marine ecosystems, alongside seaweed farming, could reduce emissions by as much as 1.4 billion tons of CO2-equivalent emissions annually by 2050. In addition to recognizing the scale of BC on coastal countries. For instance, 20% of GHG emissions in Indonesia are released from mangroves as they covert to aquaculture. Furthermore, developing countries like Kenya, Senegal, Suriname, Sumatra, Colombia, India's Sunderbans, and Madagascar have pledged to reduce their emissions by conserving mangroves.

Although coastal systems are smaller in size than forests, they sequester carbon at a quicker rater and for a longer period of time, implying a longer vintage than other credits. For example, the carbon released from 1 hectare of mangroves produces as much emissions as 3-5 hectares of tropical forest.

The goal of blue carbon is to incentivize coastal habitat conservation, protecting biodiversity, and growing communities. When an ecosystem is damaged, the carbon sequestered is emitted back to the atmosphere, which can slow down our climate change efforts. Thereby, preserving the health of coastal ecosystems provides benefits such as community employment opportunities, improved energy access, enhanced air or water quality, biodiversity, and better access to medical health care and public education.

Forest Carbon Credit- FCC

Forest Carbon Credits enables communities to generate long-term revenue for protecting the forests in their territories. Preventing forests from being harvested and cut down through better forest-management techniques prevents sequestered carbon from going back into the atmosphere. With that said, forest-related projects can generate credits using the following methods:

• Avoid deforestation or degradation (e.g. reducing the logging rate)

• Improve forest management (e.g. implementing an ecosystem-based management system to optimize/reduce the frequency of logging)

• Afforestation (e.g. plant a forest on a plot of empty land)

• Reforestation (e.g. plant a forest where there once was a forest)

High value forest conservation projects must meet the Carbovalent standard, which assesses a project based on a set of well-defined ESG criteria. To learn more about our carbon credit sourcing standard, go to Remote Sensing for Forest Carbon.

The monetary value of forestry carbon projects depends on the quality of standards under which they are issued. Consequently, projects with high-quality standards are called "charismatic" as they are usually unique and have numerous social, environmental, and sustainability co-benefits. As a result, institutions are willing to pay a premium price for "charismatic" credits to improve their environmental and social justice reputation. With that said, at the core of the Carbovalent protocol is a sourcing standard whose purpose is to facilitate a market that exclusively hosts high-quality credits that have a true positive impact on our sustainability goals.