Agriculture Criteria

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:

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

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)