Rainmatter or its partners could work with carbon offset trading exchanges like COTAP.org (Carbon Offsets to Alleviate Poverty) and CTXglobal.com (Carbon TradeXchange) such that large carbon positive/climate negative companies can buy carbon offsets from individuals engaged in carbon negative/climate positive activities including organic agriculture, afforestation, biodiesel cultivation, water harvesting, micro level solar energy generation - this would enable the flow of funds from large corporations trying to meet climate change goals to individuals engaged in climate positive activities - i.e. help fund sustainable jobs with funds set aside by large corporations for meeting climate change requirements.
Since individuals cannot typically engage directly with such carbon trading platforms, Rainmatter or partners could be the organization representing individuals selling carbon offsets, aggregating and verifying the carbon offsets, and scaling fund flow from large global corporations to individuals in sustainable jobs across rural India.
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This is a good thought Gautham, although I found the going pretty tough with generating carbon credits through small scale afforestation / agriculture activities. The documentation & verification process is pretty challenging and requires good understanding of carbon accounting methodologies as well as perseverance. I am not saying it can’t be done, but requires good collaboration between subject matter experts, project developers (i.e. farmers) and funding agencies and of course lots of patience as the returns are not immediate.
I am quite happy to take part in the journey if we see good interest from within this group.
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Hi Sangeeth, its easy for people like me with no actual experience in this area, other than the potential technology platform, to suggest things, so I feel privileged and humbled to get a response from someone who has actually tried this. I believe your points are all valid and let me try to add some value by bringing in someone I know who is into carbon trading, will revert in a day or two…
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Hi Sangeeth, I talked to a friend, Vamsi Krishna who heads Kosher Climate - the company does such enablement of carbon offsets working primarily on behalf of buyers though they do take up community projects as well - he confirmed what you had written, i.e. it can be done, but unless the projects are big enough, the cost of the paperwork and SME consultancy will be higher than the income from the carbon credits, e,g. aggregating small afforestation projects requires a lot of paperwork and auditing starting with the ownership and usage history of the land to establish what would be the carbon credits that can be sold and for how much for that particular scenario/location.
Perhaps this would become more viable when demand for offsets picks up as as it becomes mandatory for companies to offset their emissions in the medium term while cutting emissions longer term.
I also saw your other post reg the Restor platform - from what you wrote there and further info from restor.eco, its clear that Restor is already doing or planning calculation and tracking of carbon storage for each identified project, and by logical extension they could include tie ups with global carbon trading platforms. I guess I should merge this thread with the Restor discussion.
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Thanks Gautham. Just saw your message.
I am currently exploring the possibility of generating carbon credits for a potential project involving production of biochar by farmers using crop stubble as feedstock. But as discussed, the going is tough and documentation & verification standards are too stringent to pursue for now. Let me drop a note to Restor folks to see if they are able to tie up with carbon accounting / standards organizations to consider Restor’s methodology of calculating carbon sequestration is acceptable to the credit generating methodologies.