Standard

The Climate Bonds Standard and Certification Scheme is a labelling scheme for Entities, Assets and Debt Instruments. Rigorous scientific criteria ensure that Certified investments in climate mitigation are consistent with the 1.5owarming limit in the Paris Agreement. The Scheme is used globally by bond issuers, governments, investors and the financial markets to prioritise investments which genuinely contribute to addressing climate change.

Agriculture Criteria

 

Resources:

  1. Agriculture Criteria Brochure (English)​
  2. Agriculture Criteria Document (English)
  3. Agriculture Background Paper (English)
  4. FAQ's
  5. Video: How to identify green agricultural assets and projects?
    (coming soon)

Translations

Criteria

Background Documents

  • Documento de Referencia de Agricultura (Portuguese)
    (coming soon)

​Brochure

 

Climate Bonds Standard v3.0

Timeline of Development for new version 3.0 of Agri-Criteria:

May 2023: TWG Launch    
Jun 2023: IWG Launch
Jan - Mar 2023: Public Consultation 
June 2023: Criteria for crops launched

Certifications

To see the whole list of Agriculture Climate Bonds, visit our  Database of Certified Bonds         

News:

 

Status: Development of version 3.0 of the Agriculture Criteria has begun! This will expand the scope of the criteria beyond just green bonds to include certification of entities and Sustainability Linked Debt (SLD)) covering Crops and Livestock and, Deforestation and Conversion Free sectors.  

If you have technical or industry expertise in the sector and would like to collaborate in this work, reach out to standards@climatebonds.net for livestock & crop production or for value/commodity supply chains.

The Agriculture Criteria are already available for use in certifications. Bonds and loans linked to eligible assets and projects will be aligned with the Paris Agreement 1.5oC limit. Get in contact with certification@climatebonds.net to start the certification process for your agriculture green bond.

Current Criteria: The Agriculture Criteria lay out the requirements that agriculture assets and/or projects must meet to be eligible for inclusion in a Certified Climate Bond. The Criteria apply to crop and livestock production (note, Protected Agriculture is covered in separate criteria).  Criteria can be applied to production units as well as non production units (for services such as climate resilience of crop production).  The Agriculture Criteria contain both Mitigation Requirements and Adaptation & Resilience Requirements.

Timeline of Development:

February 2019: TWG Launch    
April 2019: IWG Launch
Jan - Mar 2020: Public Consultation (summary of responses here)
June 2020: Criteria for crops launched
June 2021: Criteria updated to include livestock
 

How do you identify green agricultural assets and activities?

Here's a short, step-by-step video:

 

 

Why develop eligibility Criteria for agriculture-related low carbon investments?

Agriculture and forestry can play a crucial role in achieving global decarbonisation targets. In 2014, the IPCC  estimated that these two sectors account for approximately a quarter of anthropogenic emissions. The implementation of sustainable agricultural practices is necessary for the industry to successfully reduce emissions, adapt to changes in weather patterns, and withstand the pressures placed on food security by population growth. Simultaneously, limiting deforestation and forest degradation is imperative to ensure that forests act as a net carbon sink rather than a GHG emitter.

Estimates suggest that between USD 7 billion and 7.6 billion are required per year for adaptation measures in the Agriculture, Food and Forestry sectors. Despite the need for more finance flows directed towards addressing climate impacts in these sectors, it accounts for USD37.3bn or just over 3% of the climate-aligned bond universe.

 

The Agriculture Technical and Industry Working Groups (TWG and IWG) 

Development of the Agriculture Criteria originally began through development of Land Use Criteria. However, it was decided that to improve the ambition of each the Criteria, the land sector should be tackled by several separate criteria. Development of the Agriculture Criteria followed. Now, the aim is to refine the Crop & Livestock criteria and work on a new set of criteria for Commodity Supply Chains. 

To create the Agriculture Criteria, we convened a Technical Working Group (TWG) and an Industry Working Group (IWG) with representatives from investors, public entities, environmental and agricultural NGOs and international policy bodies from around the world. 

 *TWG and IWG under formation. 

 

Technical Lead Specialist 

CGIAR
Lini Wollenberg

The Agriculture Criteria Technical Working Group Members

CEA Consulting
Amy Dickie 
 

Institute for European Environmental Policy

Anna Lorant

Wits University Johannesburg

Bob Scholes

Helsinki University

Brent Matthies (now at Nordea)

Versant Vision

Christine Negra 

CIMMYT

Clare Stirling

Ecosystem Services Markets Consortium 

Debbie Reed

 

Photo

Profundo

Gerard Rijk

 

Gund Institute for Environment

Gillian Galford

The Nature Conservancy

Greg Fishbein

FAO

Jereon Dijkman 

 

University of Edinburgh

Jonathan Hillier

University of Oxford

Kim Schumacher (now at University of Tokyo)

 

Kenyatta University

Mukiri wa Githendu

CGIAR

Ngonidzashe Chirinda

BVRio

Pablo Fernandez de Mello e Souza 

Brazilian Agriculture Research Corporation (Embrapa)

Pedro Luiz Oliveira de Almeida Machado

EBS Advisory

Raylene Watson

Kellogg School of Management

Sam Schiller

Indian Agricultural Research Institute

Soora Naresh Kumar

Forest Trends

Stephen Donofrio 

Clarmondial AG

Tanja Havemann 

UNIQUE

Timm Tennigkeit 

 


IWG

Aarti Ramachandran/Iman Effendi - FAIRR Initiative

Andrew Gazal - ESG Tech

Ankita Shukla - Sustainanalytics

Aurélie Choiral Gupta - Credit Suisse

Brian Kernohan - Hancock Natural Resource Group

Chang He - CECEP

Dana Muir, Mike Faville - BNZ

Francisco Avendano - Climate Policy IFC

Gustavo Pimentel/Débora Masullo de Goes - Sitawi

Hamish McDonald - NaturesCoin

Jacob Michaelsen - Nordea

John Kazer - Carbon Trust

Mareike Hussels - SAIL Ventures

Maria De Filippo - Affirmative Investment Management

Pedro Moura Costa - SIM/Facility

Pip Best - E&Y

Robert Rosenberg/Mélanie Comble - ISS ESG

Roberto Strumpf - Pangea Capital

Rosemarie Thijssens - Rabobank

Scot Bryson – Orbital Farm

 

 

How does this fit in with the work being done by the EU TEG?

The European Commission’s Technical Expert Group (TEG) on Sustainable Finance developed guidance for sustainable finance in agriculture. Through our CEO, Sean Kidney, we contributed to this and several of our TWG and IWG members also straddled both efforts. Both pieces of work were developed to ensure they complemented each other wherever possible.

 

Public consultation: 

The Agriculture Criteria underwent a public consultation period from 31st January to 31st March 2020. Thank you to all of those who sent in their feedback.

Two webinars took place for the initial launch in 2020 that provided an opportunity for interested parties to learn more about the Agriculture Criteria and to ask our lead technical consultant Lini Wollenberg and staff at CBI questions. The two recordings for the webinars are available here:

Tuesday 10th March 11.15 - 12.15 GMT                                                            

Tuesday 10th March 23.00 - 00.00 GMT

 

Version 1 launch 2020

 Agriculture Criteria Webinar     ​

 Apresentação do Webinar Critérios de Agricultura 

 

Version 1 launch 2020

 

 

 
 

Sintese do Criterio de Agricultura (Portuguese)