The position paper Aligning Carbon Markets with Regeneration highlights that current soil carbon markets are structurally misaligned with the realities of regenerative agriculture. Read the full article. Or check the shortcut overview below ⇓
Your Shortcut on Calls for soil carbon market to become more accessible for smaller-scale regenerative producers
Built on principles of linearity, strict quantification, and commodified carbon metrics, these markets often favor large-scale, industrial-style farms while excluding small, diverse, and regenerative producers. Key barriers include high MRV (Monitoring, Reporting, Verification) costs, rigid additionality rules that penalize early adopters, misaligned livestock accounting, and payment structures that impose long delays and risks on farmers.
The report stresses that regenerative agriculture delivers far more than carbon sequestration—such as biodiversity, water regulation, and rural resilience—but these benefits remain largely unrecognized under existing frameworks. To address this mismatch, it calls for a fundamental redesign of carbon markets around outcome-based metrics, tiered MRV systems, revised additionality logic, ecologically literate livestock accounting, and farmer-aligned financing models with earlier payments and shared risks.
CARBONICA’s mission is closely aligned with these recommendations. The project is committed to ensuring that carbon markets and climate finance mechanisms reward regenerative outcomes holistically—not just simplified carbon metrics—while empowering smaller producers to participate in and benefit from Europe’s transition toward sustainable agrifood systems. CARBONICA strives to achieve this by building farmer-centered ecosystems in Greece, Cyprus, and North Macedonia, providing training through the CARBONICA Academy, and supporting SMEs and smallholders with tailored acceleration services. Its policy papers and round tables directly feed into shaping frameworks for inclusive and farmer-friendly carbon markets, while its on-the-ground pilots demonstrate how regenerative practices can be scaled in practice. In doing so, CARBONICA is actively turning the paper’s recommendations into concrete action—bridging the gap between theory and real-world transformation.
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