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Meet our Climate Committee

Our Climate Committee is responsible for providing thought leadership and industry guidance. The Committee intends to bring best-practice thinking and ongoing developments with regards to global climate science, carbon accounting methodology, nature-based projects and the voluntary carbon market.
Our committee is split into working groups &#8211; Nature, and Climate and Policy, all are comprised of experts within their field. Our working groups meet once per quarter to discuss the challenges that arise from our work, to ensure we remain at the forefront of industry developments.
Below, we introduce you to our committee members who are on board to help shape the future of Ecologi.

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Jose is a Professor of Public Administration at the Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV EAESP) in Brazil. He is also the Chair of Climate Change Governance and Global Development at the Global Development Institute (GDI), the University of Manchester, and Visiting Chair Professor at the Institute for Global Public Policy (IGPP), Fudan University, China.
His research and policy interests concentrate on the political economy of governance, institution building and policy implementation at different levels, looking at how global and local institutions are interlinked to steer governance and action. His experience comprises work in more than 20 countries on all continents. He has been an instructor, consultant and researcher for several organizations such as different United Nations agencies, the OECD, the World Bank, sub-national and national governments, and various NGOs and small and large firms.
Previously, he held positions of Senior Research Fellow and Assistant Director of the United Nations University Institute of Advanced Study of Sustainability (UNU-IAS) in Japan and as a faculty member at the University College London (UK) and the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain) as an European Commission’s Marie Curie Fellow. He has published twelve books and more than 120 articles in peer-reviewed journals. He has served as a member of several journal editorial boards and advisory panels, such as Sao Paulo State Research Foundation, Belmont Forum and Wellcome Trust. He was invited to be a Coordinating Lead Author of the Special Report on Climate Change and Cities of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He holds a Ph.D. in Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA.

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Rémi holds a Ph.D in Ecosystem Services assessment from EPFL and an MSc in Environmental Engineering from Imperial College London. As a sustainability expert, his work primarily focuses on nature-related impact and risk assessments, biodiversity and carbon removal accounting. Rémi is devoted to better understanding the interactions and dependencies of businesses on nature and how they could fit in their climate strategy. His expertise encompasses a broad range of impact areas, including ecosystem services, voluntary carbon markets, and compliance. He also worked as a researcher and project manager on multi-stakeholder projects in Africa and the Middle East.

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Daniel’s research focuses on understanding the evolution and maintenance of plant-pollinator mutualisms by integrating molecular tools, bioinformatics, and field-based behavioural and chemical analyses. Daniel explores the mechanisms driving these interactions, investigating how trait selection, pollinator behaviour, gene flow, and nectar-inhabiting microbes shape pollination dynamics and plant reproduction. Daniel’s work spans diverse ecosystems, from tropical rainforests to alpine environments, where he conducts extensive field research. In addition to his focus on pollination ecology, he is deeply passionate about entomology and leads large-scale arthropod biodiversity surveys in tropical rainforests using metabarcoding to uncover insect diversity in some of the most species-rich environments in the world.

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Ennia is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Ecology and Conservation at the University of Exeter, researching socio-ecological dimensions of tree-based restoration in tropical smallholder farming systems. Her work explores the benefits and trade-offs of forests and trees for biodiversity, food security, and livelihoods in Kenya, with a focus on pollination as a key ecosystem service. She holds an MSc in Environmental Sciences from ETH Zurich, where her previous research focused on tree seed systems in Southeast Asia and market-based funding for forest restoration. Alongside her work in the tropics, Ennia is a Research Co-Director at the Thousand Year Trust, supporting research to restore and expand temperate rainforest landscapes across the UK.

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Daisy is a PhD Researcher at the University of Portsmouth, investigating how stakeholder perceptions, socio-economic factors, and ecosystem services influence the development and long-term success of marine and coastal nature-based solutions (NbS). She is particularly interested in coastal ecology and the connections 
between people and their local ecosystems. Alongside her PhD, Daisy has contributed to the MaCoBioS project through UK-based fieldwork and has been involved in case study research for the Blue Green Governance project.

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Christophe is a researcher with a passion for biodiversity, exploration and education. Christophe researches patterns and processes that have given rise to the amazing diversity of life we see around us. In particular, he is interested in understanding how life is changing under anthropogenic pressure, especially climate-driven shifts in species distributions. Christophe works at all scales of biology, from ecosystems to genomes. His current roles are Research Fellow at the University of Nottingham and Director of Science at The Rock Pool Project. At Nottingham, he works on genomics of three-spined stickleback in the Outer Hebrides. At The Rock Pool Project, he coordinates, helps execute, and analyses their national citizen science scheme that monitors UK intertidal wildlife.

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Amalia holds a degree in Biology from the University of Valencia (Spain) and a Master&#8217;s in Ecology and Conservation from Uppsala University (Sweden). Specialising in marine ecology, she has contributed to projects in the Baltic Sea, the Indian Ocean, and the Mediterranean. Currently, she works as a Marine Pollution Manager at the Marine Technology Center (CTN) in Cartagena, Spain, where she focuses on Descriptor 11 of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD). Her research explores how various forms of energy, particularly underwater noise, impact marine biodiversity in Mediterranean waters. The findings from this project have been recommended for the development of policies at both the national level with the Spanish Ministry of the Environment and at the European Commission level.

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Dr James A. King is a climate scientist with extensive policy interests. Currently based at the University of Sheffield, his research investigates the potential unintended consequences of large-scale nature-based solution proposals across different aspects of the climate system, from water to wildfires. He has also worked on future climate projections in tropical East Africa and on air quality in the UK. His policy interests focus on fostering closer links between climate and biodiversity decision-making, and he has worked on multilateral environmental agreements from within the UK government. James holds an undergraduate degree in Geography and a DPhil (PhD) in Climate Science, both from Oxford University.

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UK Voluntary Carbon Market Guide: Best Practices for Climate Action

The voluntary carbon market plays an important role in corporate climate strategies – but its effectiveness relies on buyers doing due diligence and rigorous quality assessment on each project, as well as placing the purchase of credits in the right place in the climate journey.
To ensure meaningful climate impact, businesses must develop a comprehensive carbon strategy and find ways to fund only high-quality credits in the voluntary carbon market – and this guide shows you how to do so with Ecologi.

<h2>Table of contents</h2>
<ul>
<li>When to buy carbon credits</li>
<li>Our new carbon projects assessment framework</li>
<li>Ecologi&#8217;s core due diligence principles</li>
<li>How Ecologi scores and ranks carbon credit projects</li>
<li>Questions to ask your carbon credit supplier</li>
<li>Take action in the voluntary carbon market</li>
</ul>

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<h2>When should businesses buy carbon credits in the voluntary market?</h2>
Businesses must not use credits in place of making direct, measurable reductions in their emissions. Instead, follow these steps to ensure you buy your carbon credits on the right step of your corporate climate action journey, and in the right way:
<ol>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Measure your emissions first – to allow you to understand where your business’s emissions are coming from. 
</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Set science-based targets and work towards them – set ambitious targets aligned with the SBTi and compatible with the global 1.5ºC warming target.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Beyond value chain mitigation (BVCM) – design your BVCM portfolio to work alongside your decarbonisation plan and address your unabated emissions in each reporting year. Align it with SBTi guidance and the Oxford Principles. </li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Buy high-quality carbon credits – use this guide to ensure the carbon credits you buy meet rigorous quality standards. Remember, under the SBTi framework you’ll also need permanent carbon removal credits for neutralising your residual emissions when you reach your net-zero date.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Disclose and report transparently – publicly disclose information about your carbon credit purchases, and clearly communicate the limited role of carbon credits in your broader sustainability strategy.</li>
</ol>

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<h2>Ecologi&#8217;s carbon project assessment framework</h2>
In April 2025, we published a report summarising how we assess carbon credit projects against our rigorous proprietary rubric. A snapshot of what goes into our carbon credit project assessment is below, or you <a href="https://cms-assets.offset.earth/app/uploads/20250428124112/Ecologi_Whitepaper_A4.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">download the full whitepaper here</a>.

<h2>Carbon project due diligence: Ecologi’s core principles</h2>
At Ecologi, we maintain general due diligence principles which we apply universally across the voluntary carbon market, to support our efforts to supply only high-quality carbon credits.
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">ICROA-endorsed standards only – we supply credits exclusively from carbon standards which are ICROA-endorsed.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Responsive to ICVCM decisions – we support the ICVCM’s two-tick approach to providing CCP-Approval to project methodologies, and we go further still, to assess individual projects on their merits and limitations as well.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Keep the carbon credit life cycle as short as possible – 75% of our credits in 2024 came directly from project developers and their nominated dispensaries (as opposed to intermediaries on the secondary market), maximising the proportion of purchase price which goes to the developer.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Locally-appropriate projects only – we take care to ensure that supported projects are being applied in appropriate geographies, where they can have the greatest impact.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Deep project-level scrutiny – our extensive assessment criteria are specific to each type of project, and we assess every project against these criteria, ensuring the project’s specifics have been taken into account.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Methodological consensus – we synthesise data we receive from our partners Sylvera, BeZero Carbon, Calyx Global and Renoster) with our own in-house analysis to uncover where there is consensus about project quality, and improve confidence.</li>
</ul>

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<h2>How to evaluate carbon credits: Ecologi&#8217;s scoring methodology</h2>
We designed a three-layer assessment process which takes into account the merits and limitations of the carbon standard used, the carbon credit methodology used, and of the individual project design.
The tables below summarise some of the data inputs we use at each stage.

<h3>Assessment level: Carbon Standard</h3>
Examples: Gold Standard, Verra, Puro Earth, Isometric, Plan Vivo.

<h3>Assessment level: Methodology (or ‘Protocol’)</h3>
Examples: GS TPDDTEC, VM0048, ACM0002.

<h3>Assessment level: Project</h3>
Examples: GS 10790, VCS 1571.

Criteria in the assessment are categorised as either quality criteria or risk criteria, and are segmented by our three pillars of impact: Climate, Nature and People. Based on how it meets each criterion, the project gains points for quality criteria, and loses points for excess risk – ultimately giving a risk-adjusted value out of 100 for each of these pillars.
Having gathered our risk-adjusted pillar scores, we use our own unique scoring formula which weights the risk-adjusted Climate score of the project equally with the combined risk-adjusted Nature and People scores. The formula then produces an ‘overall’ score (also out of 100) for the project. In order to be supplied by Ecologi, projects must meet a minimum overall score of 80, and must achieve no lower than 65 in any given risk-adjusted pillar score.

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<h2>Key questions to ask carbon credit suppliers</h2>
Selecting the right carbon credit provider is important to help guide you to make informed choices as part of your corporate sustainability strategy. Before purchasing carbon credits, businesses should ask:
<h3>Project quality </h3>
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Do you assess/validate/underwrite project quality? If so, how?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Do your projects get good ratings from the ratings agencies? If so, what ratings are they?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Do you source credits directly from project developers, or from the secondary market?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Do you monitor projects over time to ensure continued success, and how do you remedy it, if a project&#8217;s quality drops?</li>
</ul>
<h3>Due diligence</h3>
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">How do you ensure you are supporting the right projects in the right locations?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">How do you account for project permanence and mitigate risks?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">What makes your projects additional?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">How do you assess the project&#8217;s impacts on climate, nature and people?</li>
</ul>
<h3>Positioning</h3>
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">How do you contribute to the development of a high integrity voluntary carbon market?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Do you align your portfolios with the Oxford Principles? If so, how?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">How do you reflect ICVCM guidance on carbon credit methodologies and technologies?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Do you build multi-year portfolios that align to mid- &amp; long-term SBTs?</li>
</ul>
As the voluntary carbon market evolves, corporate buyers have the power and the responsibility to demand high-impact credits to drive real climate progress. This means buyers have a responsibility to do due diligence before placing an order for carbon credits.

<h2>Take action in the voluntary carbon market</h2>
As a business committed to corporate climate action, understanding the voluntary carbon market is essential for making informed decisions about carbon credits. Our comprehensive whitepaper provides deeper insights into creating an effective sustainability strategy.
<a href="https://cms-assets.offset.earth/app/uploads/20250428124112/Ecologi_Whitepaper_A4.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Download our full whitepaper</a> to learn how your business can navigate the voluntary carbon market with confidence.

<h2>Connect with one of our climate experts</h2>
Please complete our form to arrange a 30-minute discovery call to discuss your goals and get a tailored solution for your business.

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