Our role

Social Carbon Foundation is a standard setter and has developed and manages the SOCIALCARBON standard, which sets thresholds and benchmarks that help to measure greenhouse gas emission reductions, avoidance or removals, by carbon projects, which once verified can be issued as carbon credits and bought by organisations wishing to invest or offset their own activity.  

The SOCIALCARBON standard goes beyond carbon, embedding meaningful social, environmental and economic benefits in each project which are shared with their local stakeholders. As with all standards, it includes independent monitoring and verification requirements and ensures that projects are in compliance with local laws and regulations.  

Standards set the rules that project developers apply to their projects that in turn give confidence to local communities, investors and buyers of carbon credits. See below the key players in the Voluntary Carbon Market and their roles. 

Key players in the Voluntary Carbon Market

  1. Standard Setters: Standard setters establish the guidelines and methodologies that define how carbon credits are measured, reported, and verified, ensuring credibility and consistency in the voluntary carbon market. This is where Social Carbon Foundation sits.

  2. Project Developers: Project developers design and implement carbon reduction or removal projects, such as reforestation or regenerative agriculture initiatives, generates carbon credits for sale in the voluntary carbon market.

  3. Investors: Investors provide necessary capital to fund carbon reduction or removal projects, often seeking return through the sale of carbon credits generated by these projects.

  4. Brokers and Intermediaries: Brokers and intermediaries facilitate transactions between buyers and sellers of carbon credits, providing market access, liquidity, and often advisory services to participants.

  5. Buyers: Buyers purchase carbon credits to offset their residual greenhouse gas emissions, often as part of a corporate sustainability strategy or to meet voluntary climate goals.

Other players worth mentioning include:

Integrity initiatives: Integrity initiatives work to ensure the credibility and effectiveness of the voluntary carbon market by promoting best practices, transparency and aherence to robust standards across the market.

Registries: Registries track the issuance, transfer and retirement of carbon credits, maintain transparency and preventing doubling counting of credits within the market.

Validation and Verification Bodies: These independent organisations conduct audits on projects to confirm whether the project is aligning to the Standard set by the Standard Setters, and ensuring that claims of emission reductions or removals are real and verified.

What makes us different from other Standard Setters

With our origins in the Global South and being the only standard focused solely on Nature- Based Solutions, Social Carbon Foundation’s expertise fills a critical market need. All of SOCIALCARBON’s methodologies are aligned with best practice and regularly updated, going further than industry and accreditation requirements to ensure highest integrity results, delivering more for local communities and increased confidence for buyers and investors.  Our beyond-carbon approach means all our projects embed and monitor co-benefits (across additional social, human, biodiversity, financial and natural indicators) ensuring delivery of higher quality, resilient/ truly sustainable project outcomes on the ground. We are a small and agile organisation with proven ability to innovate quickly and respond dynamically to market need.