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.

The UK Nature Markets Dialogue Governance Workstream has identified three critical questions around which there is a need to build a consensus, to ensure that UK nature markets set the benchmark for transparency, efficiency and integrity. 

• What market conditions are required for high integrity markets to operate in practice 
• What sorts of market rules are required to establish these market conditions 
• What is the institutional architecture needed to create a level playing field and ensure compliance 

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. 

Publications

Interim survey results: Nature Market Governance Priorities

An initial survey of nature market specialists and stakeholders has been undertaken on nature market governance priorities.