Stafford Contributes to Foundational Guidance for Private Markets on the Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM)
Tuesday 4 February 2025– Stafford Capital Partners is pleased to have contributed to foundational guidance on the Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM) for Private Markets, published by the Initiative Climat International (iCI), a PRI-supported initiative, and the sustainability consultancy Anthesis Group. This guidance is designed to help private market participants navigate the evolving VCM landscape and achieve net zero goals.
Stafford’s Head of Sustainability, Marta Jankovic and Carbon Lead, Marek Guizot were members of the iCI working group, providing expert insight on the responsible procurement of carbon credits for private market investors through timberland investing.
The guidance includes:
Private Markets Activity
Understanding the VCM
Carbon Credits and Climate Mitigation
Market Growth
Investment Opportunities: outlining three key pathways for private market investors to engage with the VCM, including investing in carbon funds
Nature-Based Investments
Stafford’s timberland Carbon Offset Opportunity Strategy was a featured example in the “Investing in Carbon Funds” section of the guidance. As such, the strategy showcases how new forest creation, natural forest restoration and improved forest management projects can provide an investor with a supply of high-quality offsets.
Over the course of 12 months, Stafford’s timberland assets under management sequestered an aggregate 15.9 million tonnes of carbon, the amount of carbon produced by the city of Rome in a year*, and has closed its first two investments for its Carbon Offset Opportunity Strategy. These investments combined totalled USD 70 million, and comprise significant parcels of land in Brazil and New Zealand.
Read the guidance in full here.
*Stafford sequestered 15.9 million tonnes of carbon between 2023 and 2024, as reported in Stafford’s 2023/2024 Sustainability Report
About Stafford Capital Partners
Stafford is an independent private markets investment and advisory firm with USD %%AuM%% billion in assets under management and advice* for more than %%numClients%% institutional clients worldwide. Founded in 2000, Stafford has a global team of 85+ professionals investing in infrastructure, timberland & agriculture, and sustainable private equity through secondaries, primaries, and co-investments. Stafford has been a UN PRI signatory since 2010 and has committed to the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative. It puts sustainability at the centre of its investment process and implements a well-defined ESG program across all strategies. In the UK, Stafford Capital Partners Ltd is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (Firm Reference Number: 225586).
* As of %%AuMDate%%
This news update neither constitutes an offer to sell nor a solicitation to invest in any of Stafford’s funds. It is for information purposes only and is not a recommendation. It does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation to invest in any jurisdiction where the offer or sale would be prohibited or to any person not meeting the required investor criteria.