Over the last year, we have seen the emergence of a new carbon market based on the tokenisation of voluntary carbon credits. It represents a new, decentralised approach towards scaling up the carbon market, and it has seen very rapid growth since its inception.

The reasons for that growth are clear: it allows anyone with access to cryptocurrency software to instantly buy and sell tokenised carbon credits, without needing to hold an account in the underlying carbon credit program registry or undergo the usual KYC checks that come along with that. In that sense, it has the potential to unlock a huge segment of the carbon credit consumer market.

Like any new technology, it can be both a force for good and bad; the other side of the (digital) coin is that the proliferation of carbon credit-backed cryptocurrencies represents a threat to the integrity of the whole carbon market; it reality, a tokenised carbon credit is completely disconnected from the underlying carbon credit: it gives no right to the underlying credit, only a contractual right (as against the token issuer) to the environmental claims attached to it; and it is not controlled or backed by the carbon credit program provider. There is obvious scope for greenwashing and fraudulent schemes, which we have already seen happening.

It is clear that if the crypto carbon market is to have a future as a credible part of the wider carbon market, rather than as a marginal, high-risk product, it must be subject to controls to ensure that tokenised carbon credits possess the same fundamental attributes/qualities as the underlying carbon credits themselves, i.e. that the claimed carbon offsets must be real, additional, permanent, robustly quantified, independently verified, and uniquely claimed.

by Mitchell J. Klein

Environmental practitioners are well aware of the astonishing breadth and scope of the impacts resulting from the investigations into the ubiquitous presence of the so-called “forever chemicals”, including the significant efforts being expended at both the State and Federal level on regulating their use and establishing remedial standards.

But PRPs, landowners,…

By Samantha L. Brooks, Karla Grossenbacher, and A. Scott Hecker

Seyfarth Synopsis: On July 12, 2022, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued updated guidance for employers on the interplay of workplace bias laws and COVID-19 workplace testing, vaccinations, and other return-to-work issues, including reasonable accommodations and access to employees’ confidential medical information. …

Governance

On 29 June 2022, the Brazilian Superintendence of Private Insurance (“SUSEP”) published Regulation No. 666/2022, setting forth sustainability requirements applicable to the Brazilian insurance sector. Its goal is to establish guidelines for management of risks that are directly related to ESG policies of insurance and capitalization companies, local reinsurers and pension funds.

Environmental_Proposal

Greenberg Traurig Tampa office Shareholders David Weinstein and Christopher Torres and Associate Kayli Smendec co-authored the chapter titled “Environmental Enforcement and Crimes” in Environment, Energy, and Resources Law: The Year in Review 2021, published by the ABA Section of Environment, Energy, and Resources.

Click here to read Environmental Enforcement and Crimes. Reprinted with permission from the

The second version includes guidance on metrics and how companies can conduct dependency and impact evaluation.

By Paul A. Davies, Michael D. Green, Austin J. Pierce, and James Bee

On 28 June 2022, the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) released version 0.2 of its framework for nature-related risk and opportunity management and disclosure (the Framework). The announcement builds on the release of the first iteration in March 2022, which was broadly received positively by market participants in a public feedback process hosted on the TNFD website.

The TNFD was established to develop a risk management and disclosure framework for organisations to report and act on evolving nature-related risks, with the ultimate aim of supporting a shift in global financial flows away from nature-negative outcomes and toward nature-positive outcomes. As the name may suggest, the TNFD has based much of its fundamental structure, including many aspects of the core disclosure recommendations, on the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). The TNFD hopes that the Framework will therefore have the market impact that the TCFD recommendations have had in the climate space, and provide a basis by which companies can represent their natural capital-linked risks and opportunities in a clear and comparable manner for investors.