We don't live in a perfect world. I wish we did, especially when it comes to fighting climate change. Sure, we have 30 percent of the world on clean energy, but we still depend a lot on fossil fuels for the near future. Take the Science Based Targets initiative. It's a leading decarbonization initiative for businesses. Businesses have taken a target, on an average, of 6.4 percent emission reductions per year, year on year, till they go net zero. That's great news. But what happens to the other 93.6 percent? My fight is on that 93.6 percent. Here's the red triangle, is what I call it. What happens between now and then? Who takes care of these emissions? Who's taking responsibility for these emissions that we are leaving out there in the atmosphere?

Here's where carbon credits come in. One carbon credit equals one ton of carbon that is either removed, reduced or avoided. These don't come from thin air. They're third-party audited, certified using international standards. These credits can then be bought by companies to offset their emissions. Not the 6.4 percent they are to reduce -- it's for this 93.6, and that's the important point. We're not saying do not reduce. You reduce, but go beyond, because this red triangle is important. This is also not a license to pollute. This allows companies to take responsibility for these emissions, yes, but it also allows these companies to work beyond their boundaries and help things like the energy transition, things like planting mangroves in some other country for the communities, the frontline communities who bear the brunt of climate change every day of their lives.

I actually call them the first responders, not the vulnerable. It's an important distinction to make. Solutions can and should reach every part of the planet, from the tropics of Papua to the deserts of the Sahel, to the settlements of the Amazon, everywhere. Think of carbon credits as a bridge. An agile bridge. It gets you funding right now. We need finance now ... and that's an important concept. Think back to the red triangle, the 93.6.

So sometimes, we’re called the Wild Wild West, the carbon markets. I have been working in carbon for almost two decades now, and I have seen the difference it can make. I'll take you to Indonesia. There was this NGO that reached out to us in 2021 and said, "We want to build a wall of mangroves." I said, "Why?" So in 2004, when the tsunami hit all those islands which had standing mangroves, the waves, they were tackled faster, and hence, there was less destruction in those islands. Again, you have to remember that public climate finance is slow to reach these last-mile communities, because it's steeped in bureaucracy and geopolitics. Geopolitics, people, the world we live today. And they came to us, and we made it happen, through carbon credits. There you go, a wall of mangroves, baby mangroves, but they grow up really quickly.

Sometimes, these credits, and I hear this a lot, "It's a scam." And I get it, because there have been some high-profile failures about carbon markets that you might have heard about. And I get it, but not all projects are failures, and not all failures are the end of the story. Let me talk about one of my failures. The same mangroves we planted in Indonesia, out of those, in one area of Sumatra, there was this massive flood in the fall of 2024. Those walls of mangroves disappeared. The floods came in and took all those trees. Does that mean all those carbon credits that we claimed for the projects were bogus? No, because we account for these risks. In any carbon standards and methodologies, we have things like dispersed planting, risk management and buffers. Buffers is an important concept. Every project keeps aside about 15 to 20 percent of carbon credits for exactly this reason. So the credit and the claim stands. This is important, because most of climate action will happen in places where the risk is high. That's the way it should be done.

I often hear about ... "Polluters pay." I go to conferences and I see people holding up signs, "Polluters pay." And I almost question, saying, "Polluters pay, but pay who?" Right? So carbon markets actually allow for these polluters to pay directly to the people who are taking climate action. This is important: directly to people who are taking climate action. And the planet, frankly, could not care where your decarbonization comes from.

So case in point, it costs 75 dollars to reduce one ton of carbon, on average, in the European Union. In Southeast Asia, that average is 15 dollars a ton. You're getting five times more impact, value for your buck, and you're getting I don't know how many more times of the social impact. I have seen it firsthand. Let me take you to Kashmir, [to] a distant village in India, where the grid will never reach. Solar home lighting systems here. Same project in Indonesia. Women microenterprises making batik products using mangrove pigments. Livelihoods. Meet Injara. He’s an ex-poacher in Madagascar, now plants mangroves with us. Social change. A football team in Kigoma, Tanzania. These are women who plant agroforestry systems with us in Kigoma, but play football. We have village-level football competitions. Now community building cannot be decoupled from nature restoration. This is a very important point.

And this is a scale up [program]. This clean cooking concrete kitchen [program] in rural Bangladesh was languishing at about 500,000 households in 2012. We took it up to 6.5 million households in the next few years. Scale is of essence on climate action, and that's where markets can help. This is all possible because, when climate action is rooted in people and possibilities, markets allow us to explore those possibilities. Sometimes, I hear about the accounting. "Ah, but the accounting is not solid." I get it, but which part of climate science is solid accounting? The science improves, so does the accounting. We also worry about things like Indigenous rights, consent on local populations, benefit-sharing mechanisms. Please understand that we worry about it; so do the carbon standards. A carbon finance is not a grant, it's a transaction. It talks to the equality of the transactor and the transacted. A farmer transitioning to a cleaner practice is being paid for a service. It's not a dole-out. These people, these programs have nowhere else to go for money.

So companies will reduce what they can, and they will invest in carbon credits for what they can't. It's the right thing to do. But today, all of the market detractors make it impossible, or make it so much harder for companies who are actually trying. This will not solve this problem. We have to keep trying, for mistakes will happen, and that's OK. What is not right is to let go of the only tools that work for the Global South. Today, we are making inaction feel safer than action. That's not how this gets solved. So let's fix what needs fixing. Let's take responsibility for all those emissions and leave no emissions behind. Price every ton. That's the only responsible thing to do.