Sustainable Development Goals

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon: “The seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are our shared vision of humanity and a social contract between the world’s leaders and the people.”

When the underlying carbon project also helps to meet some of the UN's SDGs, the value of a credit from that project to potential buyers may be higher, and the credit can trade at a premium to other types of projects.

For example, community-based projects – which are usually very localized and typically designed and managed by local groups or NGOs – tend to produce smaller volumes of carbon credits. It is also often more expensive to certify them. However, they usually generate more additional co-benefits and meet the UN's SDGs, contributing, for instance, to improved welfare for the local population, better water quality, or the reduction of economic inequality.

For this reason, credits emitted by community-based projects may trade at a premium to projects that don't meet SDGs, such as industrial projects, which are typically larger-scale and can often produce large volumes of credits with more easily verified GHG offset potential.