Credible Offsets

Commitment to The Climate Pledge means signing up to a radical shift in how we think about and approach offsets. They’re far more than a business accounting tool to neutralize remaining emissions—they are the opportunity for businesses to go beyond their own operations and work together to tackle some of the biggest challenges on the journey to the Paris Agreement targets. Just ‘buying some offsets’ won’t cut it. The key here is positive impact on climate change, delivered with intent, integrity, and transparency.

Even as we reshape global business practices in the low-emission and zero-carbon economy we’re working so hard towards, businesses joining forces under The Climate Pledge can harness nature-based solutions at a truly transformative scale—and neutralize remaining emissions in the process. As the road to carbon neutrality twists and turns, we have the capacity, means, and scientific integrity to get there.

One of the answers to the climate challenge has been growing all around us, all along: The natural world. Its soils, forests, grasslands, shrublands, wetlands, and aquatic ecosystems have the unique power to remove carbon from the atmosphere and store it. Essentially, we have a vast, underused carbon storage capability that has huge potential, and nature-based solutions are the way to harness that potential.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is clear: Nature-based solutions like forest conservation and reforestation are mission-critical if we hope to keep global temperature increases to 1.5ºC, in line with the Paris Agreement. With involvement and investment from The Climate Pledge signatories, we can scale nature-based solutions to a point where they can have the needed impact on the world—and get us to our ambitious goal.