Agriculture Criteria

 

Status: The Agriculture Criteria is available for use in certifications. Get in contact with certification@climatebonds.net to start the certification process of your agriculture green bond. 

Bonds and loans linked to these eligible assets and projects will be aligned with the Paris Agreement 2 oC limit.

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 perennial and non perennial crop production - note, that Protected Agriculture are covered in a separate criteria.  At this stage, the criteria do not cover livestock.  Both production and non production units (such as services for climate resilience of crop production).

The Agriculture Criteria contain both Mitigation Requirements and Adaptation & Resilience Requirements:

 

Technical Team:

The Agriculture Criteria certifications are supported by a technical team of working group members:

Amy Dickie - CEA Consulting
Gerard Rijk - Profundo/Chain Reaction Research
Gillian Galford - Gund Institute for Environment
Lini Wollenberg - CGIAR
Ngonidzashe Chirinda - UM6P
Pablo Fernandez de Mello e Souza - BVRio

 

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 on Tuesday 10th March 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 any specific questions they had. 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

 Agriculture Criteria Webinar

 Agriculture Criteria Public Consultation Webinar Presentation            ​

 Apresentação do Webinar Critérios de Agricultura 

 Presentación del Webinar Criterios de Agricultura

 

 

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. 

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 Lead Specialist Lini Wollenberg - CGIAR
TWG	IWG
Amy Dickie - CEA Consulting	Aarti Ramachandran/Iman Effendi - FAIRR Initiative
Anna Lorant - Institute for European Environmental Policy	Andrew Gazal - ESG Tech
Bob Scholes - Wits University Johannesburg	Ankita Shukla - Sustainanalytics
Brent Matthies - University of Helsinki	Aurélie Choiral Gupta - Credit Suisse
Christine Negra - Versant Vision	Brian Kernohan - Hancock Natural Resource Group
Clare Stirling - CIMMYT	Chang He - CECEP
Debbie Reed - Ecosystem Services Markets Consortium	Dana Muir, Mike Faville - BNZ
Gerard Rijk - Profundo	Francisco Avendano - Climate Policy IFC
Gillian Galford - Gund Institute for Environment	Gustavo Pimentel/Débora Masullo de Goes - Sitawi
Greg Fishbein - The Nature Conservancy	Hamish McDonald - NaturesCoin
Jonathan Hillier - University of Edinburgh	Jacob Michaelsen - Nordea
Kim Schumacher - University of Oxford	John Kazer - Carbon Trust
Ngonidzashe Chirinda - CGIAR	Mareike Hussels - SAIL Ventures
Pablo Fernandez de Mello e Souza - BVRio	Maria De Filippo - Affirmative Investment Management
Pedro Luiz Oliveira de Almeida Machado - Brazilian Agriculture Research Corporation (Embrapa)	Pedro Moura Costa - SIM/Facility
Raylene Watson - ebsadvisory	Pip Best - E&Y
Sam Schiller - Kellogg School of Management	Robert Rosenberg/Mélanie Comble - ISS ESG
Stephen Donofrio - Forest Trends	Roberto Strumpf - Pangea Capital
Tanja Havemann - Clarmondial AG	Rosemarie Thijssens - Rabobank
Timm Tennigkeit - UNIQUE	Scot Bryson – Orbital Farm

 

 

How does this fit in with the work being done by the 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.

 

Note on Livestock:

Livestock production - including grazed and stall-fed cattle, buffalo, sheep, goats, dairy, pigs and poultry and their waste (manure) and related grassland or pasture are not within the scope of these Criteria and are not available for Certification at this time. 

 

There may however, be livestock specific Criteria released at a later date as there is potential to substantially reduce emissions in this activity relative to business as usual and this page will be updated and information posted on our Blog.