Market Governance

Goal

The goal of the Market Governance Dialogue is to help the UK put in place the institutional architecture to ensure that nature markets learn from past mistakes (eg in voluntary carbon markets), whilst setting the global benchmark for protections against greenwashing.

Aims

The Dialogue aims to:

• engage business, the finance sector, farmers and other landholders, environment groups and regulators, in a process to identify and evaluate the options for UK nature market governance and oversight.
• consider the institutional architecture required to ensure that UK nature markets deliver the transparency, efficiency and integrity needed to build trust and confidence and accelerate investment in nature-based solutions across the UK.
• feed into the Government’s commitment in its Green Finance Strategy to a voluntary carbon and nature markets consultation, on specific steps and interventions needed to mobilise additional finance through high-integrity voluntary markets and protect against the risk of greenwashing.
• complement the work by the British Standards Institution (‘BSI’) on a high integrity standards framework for UK nature markets, by considering the institutional architecture required to ensure that the use of standards for particular purposes is agreed and properly authorised, and compliance with the standards effectively monitored and enforced.

Co-lead and sponsors

The Environmental Markets Board has agreed to co-lead the Market Governance Dialogue which is being sponsored by Arup and Frontier Economics. 

Timeline

• Roundtable (March)
• Issues Paper (June)
• Workshops (date TBC)
• Roundtable (hosted by Arup - date TBC)
• Final report and recommendations (date TBC)