Our Operational Transparency Approach

When we go into a supermarket, we can choose an item off the shelf, and immediately see the ingredients, nutrition information, and any relevant fairtrade, organic, vegan or halal accreditations right on the packaging.

If we expect this level of transparency from the products that impact our bodies, shouldn’t we expect the same from projects that impact our climate?

Since the advent of the Paris Agreement, global carbon markets have expanded in size and complexity. The rules of how global carbon markets will operate under the Agreement’s Article 6 carbon markets mechanism have been confirmed however we are yet to see clarity on how these rules will be implemented – both in terms of how countries might trade carbon credits through bilateral arrangements (Article 6.2); and how emission reductions might be credited at a UN level (Article 6.4).

Amid this uncertainty, voluntary carbon markets are maturing beyond nascency, and are receiving much higher levels of scrutiny as corporate buyers engage in carbon procurement to support meeting voluntary climate targets or to attain carbon neutrality. With this rapid and uneven market growth has come a clear asymmetry of information between those producing and overseeing the credits, and those buying the credits.

For carbon markets to remain a viable climate solution moving forward, all participants need to focus on building trust in the standards, methods, projects and credits being created. We have a shared responsibility in maintaining integrity in this market, and as a carbon project developer we see that we have a critical role being more transparent and accountable about the products we are bringing to market.

We believe that credit buyers, market observers and the general public have a right to transparent and accessible information about the carbon projects that claim to make positive climate impacts. We also believe that as suppliers of these products, carbon project developers should be responsible for providing this information about their own projects to the market, so buyers can make informed decisions about what and how they invest in climate action.

Right now the majority of market buyers and observers don’t fully understand what they should be looking for in a good project, nor do they understand the questions they should ask to critically analyse the standards of integrity within a project – or compare them against others in their class. Without a base level of knowledge of how to approach project due diligence, carbon market investment and procurement is inherently risky. This is the critical decade to bring forward investment into as much climate action as possible, and we must do as much as we possibly can to de-risk the opportunities and drive investment into real emission reduction activities whilst we can still make a difference.

It is with this in mind, that WeAct has taken a market-leading step forward in providing real transparency about our operations, and our projects. From September 2023, WeAct is now publicly sharing detailed due diligence information across our website, to help buyers understand our general approach to project development, and then how we undertake individual projects – including how we manage risks, and ensure abatement is real and verifiable.

Across our website, WeAct now provides detail on how we approach community engagement, free prior & informed consent (FPIC), benefits sharing arrangements, environmental integrity, and monitoring, reporting & verification (MRV).

Detailed project information can sometimes be found in project design documents on international registries, however these documents become very technical very quickly and it can be extremely hard to pull our simple language explanations of a project or how it works. Some domestic schemes don’t provide this information at all, and so across the board the access to project-level information is uneven and inconsistent. We have endeavoured to provide:

• detailed information about our projects in an easily accessible manner, including translating technical design document information;
• Supplementary information about data points or project specific intricacies not typically covered in a traditional design document;
• Detailed information about sustainable development impact and project risk management; and
• Additional technical detail and reasoning that takes into account live market criticisms that challenge specific methods or activities.

For each of the projects listed on our website, WeAct now provides a large amount of information publicly, of course accommodating any confidentiality requirements embedded in contractual agreements (for the protection of community privacy concerns). We have taken our lead from market analysts, due diligence advice providers, buyers, and ratings agencies, and compiled a rich capsule of information to help you truly understand our projects and the commitment to approach that sits behind each activity. The information for each project is mapped in the following way:

Our Commitment

We are committed to a consistent and high level of transparency across our WeBuild portfolio of projects – those that we are intimately involved with. We approach our projects from a foundation of continuous improvement and although no project will ever be perfect, we believe we have in place processes to deal with issues as (or before) they arise, and seek to apply new methods, technologies and integrity concepts as they emerge. We welcome any questions about our projects and the information we have provided, and are keen to work with the market and its observers towards a more transparent, and higher integrity future.

For projects we provide services to (WePartner) and those that we procure from in OTC market trades (WeTrade), we will be able to provide differing levels of information based on what we have access to. More detail on these different due diligence levels and project categories can be found here.