Manulife Investment Management To Govern Timberland and Agriculture Carbon Projects

Manulife Investment Management announced new guidelines for managing quality carbon credits for timberland and agriculture.

FREMONT, CA: Manulife Investment Management has released new standards for managing high-quality carbon credits in the forest and agriculture sectors. Its timberland purchase screening for existing carbon projects and prospective carbon project development prospects currently incorporates the new criteria. They speak to the company's goal of producing high-quality, high-integrity carbon credits for investors and the environment.

Manulife Investment Management's internal working group did a landscape study of the leading carbon standards developed by several independent organizations over the previous year. The working group then generated a set of carbon principles aligned with the draught Core Carbon Principles developed by the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market. This newly formed governing body evolved from the Taskforce on Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets. Critical elements of additionality, permanence, leakage, and reliable monitoring, reporting, and verification are included in the firm's new carbon rules, but they are not limited to them. Only projects that closely follow the new rules will be recommended by the internal carbon standards working group.

Carbon credits must help cut carbon emissions and support global climate change activities. The baselines must be specified as the emissions levels that occur in a typical company environment. For verification, issuance, and credit trading, it must be monitored, reported, and confirmed using recognized and certified intermediaries, platforms, and protocols administered by public or private organizations. It must also minimize and account for any leakage—calculate and minimize emissions that may transfer to nearby or adjacent locations that aren't participating, and focus on additional social and ecological benefits like improving biodiversity and minimizing negative externalities that may result from carbon project activities.

Across the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Brazil, and Chile, Manulife Investment Management administers over 6 million acres of timberland. It also manages almost 400,000 acres of prime farmland in the United States' major agricultural regions, as well as in Canada, Chile, and Australia. With a total AUM of USD 59.2 billion, the firm's private markets activities include private equity and credit, infrastructure, real estate, forests, and agriculture.