Sliced: VCM+ Coalition Launches Vision for the Verified Carbon Market

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Modified by: Jay Tipton

We’re excited to celebrate the launch of the VCM+ Coalition, unveiled during New York Climate Week.

Led by the High Tide Foundation, ZOMALAB, and the Bezos Earth Fund, this new initiative represents an important next step in transforming the carbon market – advancing from today’s voluntary systems toward an equitable, transparent, and high-integrity verified carbon market (VCM+). We are proud to have supported its development and to continue contributing to this collaborative effort driving scaled, high-impact climate investment.

Through high-integrity credits, the VCM+ holds significant potential to mobilize climate finance at scale but to date, this potential has been underrealized. The VCM+ Coalition is addressing these challenges head on, and setting a course for a next-generation verified carbon market that will reduce or remove 5 billion cumulative tons of CO2e by 2035 and drive hundreds of billions of dollars to frontline communities, climate solutions, and nature.

The growing VCM+ Coalition has united over 50 global organizations across sectors to coordinate reforms and mobilize the funding necessary to expand proven solutions, scale promising innovation, and address critical gaps.

The VCM+ Coalition’s work is guided by a shared vision for the future of carbon markets, anchored in five pillars:

High-Integrity Science: The VCM+ is grounded in rigorous scientific standards that ensure carbon credits effectively reduce or remove greenhouse gas emissions.
Robust Oversight: The VCM+ is governed by a strong legal and institutional framework and supported by modern, interoperable market infrastructure aligned with financial market principles.
Trusted Communications: The VCM+ fosters a culture of transparency, accountability, and clarity in all market interactions.
Targeted Finance: The VCM+ mobilizes scaled, accessible capital through innovative carbon finance instruments that unlock high-impact mitigation projects.
Scaled Demand: The VCM+ enables climate-ambitious companies and governments to meet climate goals by credibly purchasing and retiring high-integrity carbon credits at scale.

“The VCM+ represents the next chapter of the carbon market, from voluntary to verified, with oversight, science, and integrity at its core,” said Alexia Kelly, Managing Director of the Carbon Policy and Markets Initiative at the High Tide Foundation. “With clear rules, trust, and equity, this market can scale as a powerful tool to fight climate change.”

About The VCM+ Coalition:

The VCM+ Coalition is a global initiative to build the next-generation verified carbon market, unifying and accelerating action across the carbon market ecosystem. It aims to deliver 5 billion cumulative tons of CO₂e reduced or removed between 2026 and 2035 and mobilize an additional $100 billion in climate finance, across voluntary and compliance systems while restoring trust, improving outcomes for communities and nature, and building a high-integrity, equitable, and scalable market.

To learn more about the VCM+, please reach out or visit www.vcmcoalition.org. And if you’d like to sign up to join the VCM+ Coalition, you are invited to do so here.

The original version of the VCM+ announcement can be found here.

At Gordian Knot Strategies, our goal is to help mobilize $1 billion per year in climate finance. That is why we’re committed to making climate finance smarter and faster by addressing a broken impact investing screening process. That’s why we built Traro®, a predictive analytics platform designed to help investors rapidly triage opportunities with clarity, consistency, and confidence.

We recently hosted a live webinar focused on leveraging Traro® for more effective impact investing screening. If you weren’t able to attend, the recording link can be found here.

For those interested in further exploring these best practices, a free guide is available – Smarter Climate Investing: 7 Strategic Filters Before Your First Impact Dollar – which distills actionable lessons learned for screening climate projects using seven essential criteria.

And if your organization is interested in seeing Traro® in action, we’d love to show you how it works. Email us at traro@gordianknotstrategies.com.

There’s no cost to access the guide or the demo. Our goal is to equip more investors with tools that unlock real climate impact.

We’re building a global database of impact investors to help mobilize $1 billion annually in climate finance by 2030. If your organization is interested in funding climate or environmental projects, we invite you to fill out our Impact Investor Information Form. Your contact details will remain confidential, and we’ll only connect you with aligned opportunities. There is no fee to participate.

To access the form click here.

Interested in connecting with us on climate finance, impact investment, climate solutions strategy, or carbon credit development and commercialization?

Book a 30-minute conversation with Gordian Knot Strategies here to discuss how we can support your goals.

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