How Imperative unlocked carbon finance for a South African forest restoration project with a pre-issuance rating

Businesses are increasingly recognising the need to deploy investments into new projects as well existing ones to reach net zero, marking a shift towards the pre-issuance carbon market. To protect their reputation, many look to early-stage projects with strong potential to avoid or remove carbon. Investing in pre-issuance credits can help hedge against rising costs, and secure high-quality offtake for the years ahead. But while buyers play an essential role in scaling the market, they need reassurance that they are channelling finance towards effective climate action. Forestry projects represent the largest sector in the voluntary carbon market. Growth in credit issuance within the Afforestation, Reforestation and Revegetation carbon removals method makes it the fastest growing sub-sector amongst nature-based solutions. Developers such as Imperative, who operate carbon projects at a global scale and who wish to differentiate their projects on the basis of quality, are faced with the challenge of demonstrating to the market that the risks inherent in projects are well understood, mitigated and managed.  Detailed third-party assessment of the design, risks and mitigants of a project, in the form of an external rating, assists in providing an independent assessment of quality, thereby helping to secure funding, offtake and quality-differentiated pricing.