KUALA LUMPUR – In an effort to further strengthen the Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM) ecosystem, Bursa Malaysia Berhad and Verra, the world’s leading greenhouse gas crediting programme manager, have inked a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on May 12 this year.
In a recent statement, the Exchange stated that this MoU will help enable Bursa Malaysia to pursue its goal in establishing a VCM which is scalable, capable of serving a broad range of market participants, and is based on established rules and international standards.
The VCM was announced in October 2021 as an initiative led by Bursa Malaysia to enable businesses to offset their carbon footprints through purchasing carbon credits generated by projects with aims to remove or reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
According to the Exchange, the VCM’s establishment is in line with Malaysia’s plans to transition towards becoming a low-carbon economy with goals to become a carbon-neutral country by 2050.
The statement explained that Verra is a leading international standard-setting non-profit organisation that manages the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) programme. Known as the world’s largest greenhouse gas crediting program, the VCS has over 1,800 registered projects in nearly 100 countries, generating more than 900 million carbon credits to date.
Additionally, Verra helps to address the world’s most intractable environmental and social challenges through developing and managing standards that enables the private sector, nations, and civil society to realise ambitious sustainable development and climate action goals.
Apart from that, Bursa Malaysia also intends to establish a VCM that will allow for digitally trade standardised contracts for high quality carbon credits to be done in a transparent and orderly way.
The Exchange’s CEO, Datuk Muhamad Umar Swift, stated that collaborating with Verra is the first of many avenues that Bursa Malaysia aims to use in order to create a fair and orderly VCM.
“We will continue to work together with other organisations such as Verra, that have well-established methodologies for measuring climate action and sustainable development outcomes and have been through extensive stakeholder consultation and review.
“It is expected that the market will acknowledge Verra’s VCS programme to be among the main standards used to issue high quality carbon credits to be traded,” he continued.
Meanwhile, Verra’s CEO, David Antonioli, stated that Verra is looking forward to supporting Bursa Malaysia to establish a VCM to help scale up urgently required climate action.
The statement had also noted that the MoU was inked with the intention of enhancing local capacity in Bursa Malaysia along with the potential market participants and local ecosystem players via webinars, workshops, seminars and other events, in order to lay the needed foundation for a robust VCM in Malaysia.
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