Planet

The CDR Industry Commitments will contribute to success in meeting global climate goals, both by addressing the climate and other environmental implications of CDR activities and by building the social support required.

Society

The CDR Industry Commitments will contribute to building social acceptance of CDR by providing a social contract that is concise enough to be understood and that provides a yardstick against which to keep the industry accountable.

CDR Industry

The Commitments offer a wide range of benefits to industry leaders, including the guidance for new entrants into the community, information for key stakeholders, and credibility stemming from explicit alignment with an industry “standard”. The Commitments will constrain individual signatories, but if widely adopted, will provide systemic accountability for the sector. Similarly, the benefits to individual leaders should extrapolate to broader benefits to the industry, including trust in CDR in the wider policy maker and investor communities, and elsewhere.

While they take inspiration from a number of existing initiatives, these Commitments have several key characteristics; the combination of these is what makes the Commitments new and unique:

Voice

These are industry commitments, entered into by CDR technology companies, companies in the CDR ecosystem (e.g. buyers, marketplaces, insurers, consultants, MRV solution providers, etc), and related industry organizations (e.g. associations of companies involved in specific CDR methods). The Commitments should, where possible, have the support of the NGO and academic communities, but they are conceived as a tool to structure and discipline the CDR industry itself. They can be used by any organization in the CDR community.

Openness

The Commitments, and endorsements and signatures to them, are entirely public – this is essential to the value proposition. Moreover, the Commitments have been developed in a public process that allowed for substantial and substantive input from civil society, government, and all the corners of the CDR community itself.

Geographical Coverage

The Commitments have a global vocation.

Level of Detail

A key dimension of the discussions that were held during the development of the Commitments was the level of detail into which they should go. The text seeks to strike a balance between, on the one hand, being high-level enough to be easily understood and broadly applicable, and on the other hand, being detailed enough to avoid excessive room for misinterpretation, misunderstanding, and circumvention.