New Delhi

Amazon is going against the conventional process of carbon offset validation that may create differentiated markets with higher risks regarding quality.

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The company additionally launched its own standard known as Abacus, which was developed jointly with a carbon registry named Verra to avoid the use of a system created by the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM).

Interestingly, Jeff Bezos, the founder and the executive chair of Amazon supports ICVCM through his Earth Fund.

According to Amazon, Abacus is inherently a loftier standard that guarantees that the carbon offset projects provide the intended and substantiated effect.

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These offsets are thus planned to be used by the company to offer net-zero emissions by the year 2040.

Nonetheless, some analysts such as Pedro Martins Barata, the co-chair of ICVCM’s group of experts, believe that this action threatens to confuse the market where various companies are likely to develop their own standards.

Barata wants to see Abacus get integrated into the system that ICVCM uses to bring the format they both use into parity.

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Thus, the overall, primary voluntary carbon offset market is still not very vast, and there are doubts about some of the projects claiming that they reduce emissions.

Amazon, therefore, plans to do this amid this fact while some experts have hailed the measures of Abacus as increased transparency, they have further queried its permanence assurance.

The environmental lobby also brought out their concerns. Carbon Market Watch’s Gilles Dufrasne details that firms might view purchasing offsets as an opportunity to neglect actual efforts at emission reduction.

Verra is optimistic that the label is soon going to be out; probably in several weeks. Despite this, some people view Abacus as an advantage that will lead to the market’s development.

Eron Bloomgarden, the founder of a non-profit organisation for forest conservation funding, Emergent, opines that, besides Abacus and other tools that have been developed, there are sizable problems that cannot be solved without international recognition.

(With inputs from Reuters)