A point of view from the Repricing Carbon project. New here? Start with What Is a Carbon Credit?
Most of the work of judging a carbon project happens at a desk. Methodologies, satellite images, spreadsheets, monitoring reports. That work is essential, and the people who do it are rigorous and smart. But after months in this market, I keep arriving at the same quiet thought. Some truths about a project only show up on the ground, and the market needs more people who can read them there.
What a desk cannot see
A carbon project is not really a document. It is soil, water, plants, animals, and people, doing something over years. A spreadsheet can tell you a project claims to practice regenerative grazing. Standing in the pasture tells you whether it actually does. A report can say a community supports a forest project. A week in the village tells you if that is true or a signature on a form.
You can measure a project from orbit. You cannot smell the soil, read the room, or tell whether the people doing the work believe in it. That still takes a person on the ground.
I am not arguing against the data. Good data is what makes this market credible, and I have written a whole series defending it. I am arguing that the data needs a partner: people who have actually done the work the projects describe, and who can tell the real thing from the performance of it.
Why this is also a funding story
Here is the part that turned this from a complaint into a mission for me.
Good assessment is usually framed as a gate, a way to keep weak projects out. That is half the picture. The other half is that a credible, on-the-ground read can pull good projects in. A real regenerative farm, a serious eco-village, a working animal sanctuary, these often struggle to prove their value in the language the market wants. Someone who understands both worlds can help them document what they are really doing, meet the standard honestly, and unlock the funding that lets them grow.
That is the reform loop working at the level of a single project. Better assessment does not just punish the bad. It finds and finances the good. And the good, in this market, is often hiding in places a spreadsheet never visits.
The honest limits
I want to be careful here, because this market has enough overclaiming. Formal validation and verification of carbon credits is done by accredited bodies under strict rules, and I am not pretending to be one. The five quality questions still have to be answered with real evidence, not vibes and good intentions.
What I am describing is the layer next to that: ground-truth expertise that strengthens the formal process. The person who can walk a project, ask the right questions, spot the gap between the report and the reality, and help an honest project tell its story straight. That work makes the auditors’ job easier and the buyers’ confidence earned.
Why I want to do this
This is the part where I stop being a neutral writer, because it is personal.
I have spent decades with my hands in this work. Organic farming and permaculture design. Building an eco-village and an animal sanctuary. Solar and clean energy. Coordinating volunteers and working alongside local communities in El Salvador, Mexico, and Colombia, in Spanish, on real projects with real stakes. I know what a healthy regenerative system looks and feels like, and I know what a project looks like when it is mostly a brochure.
I would love to put that to work helping assess, strengthen, and fund carbon projects around the world. Not from a desk alone, but on the ground, where the truth of a project actually lives. I am even starting in my own backyard, trying to earn a carbon credit with a worm farm, just to feel the gap between good intentions and a defensible claim. It is a humbling place to stand, and exactly where I want to be.
Where to go next
If this resonates, the bigger argument behind it is in the reform loop, and the human-scale version is my worm farm experiment. To understand the kinds of projects this is all about, see the main types of carbon credit projects.
A note from the author. I have spent the better part of two decades working in sustainability: in solar and clean energy, in permaculture and regenerative land projects, and in marketing the mission-driven businesses trying to do this right. Carbon credits are the part of that world I came to most recently, and I am still very much a learner here. There are people who know this market far better than I do, and I have real respect for the work they have put into building it. If I got something wrong in here, I apologize, and I would genuinely like to hear about it so I can learn and correct it. I am writing this to start a conversation, not to have the last word. That is the whole point. This is a learning experience for me too, and the conversation is what moves all of us forward. If this piece helped you, share it. If you see it differently, even better. Let’s talk.