Relegitimising the voluntary carbon market: Visions of digital monitoring, reporting and verification

The voluntary carbon market (VCM) faces a legitimacy crisis amid accusations of greenwashing, just as companies worldwide increasingly rely on it to achieve their net-zero targets. To address the criticisms, digital technologies to improve the monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) process of nature-based carbon projects are envisioned to provide greater transparency and thus restore the legitimacy of the market. This study analyses narratives and visions developing around digital MRV, building on observations at industry events and public communication from digital MRV enterprises. Drawing on critical nature-society scholarship and literatures on green capitalism, I argue that digital MRV enables a vision of planetary improvement through large-scale nature restoration. Yet, as the technologies are largely used to produce a larger supply of more trust-worthy carbon credits, I suggest that digital MRV mainly serves to solve two issues in the VCM, namely that of buyers facing reputational risks and expected supply constraints. As such, I argue that digital MRV by providing non-disruptive disruption through making nature legible to market logics serves as a technical fix to the VCM’s legitimacy crisis. Rather than transforming carbon markets and nature restoration, digital technologies enable and relegitimise ongoing carbon offsetting practices and in turn capital accumulation by incumbent stakeholders.