Voluntary Carbon Markets: Analysis of Co-benefits of Brazilian Projects

This study presents partial results of a research that aims to examine the co-benefits of sustainable development of the voluntary carbon market in Brazil. Therefore, we carried out exploratory research, document analysis and illustrative case studies, based on the analytical matrix constructed from the United Nations Framework Conventions on Climate Change (UNFCCC) studies on co-benefits from the regulated carbon market. The results presented showed that two of the four projects had greater advances in promoting sustainable development, contradicting the results of the UNFCCC (2011) and Boyd et al (2009) in their studies on the regulated market. The achieved result confirms the major potential market for voluntary contribution to the sustainable development at the local scale, given greater flexibility and diversity of actors. Moreover, it was found that some co-stimulate other benefits in the local communities where they were developed, besides the more advanced projects that were registered in the International Standards that require the attendance of indicators that go beyond the reduction of greenhouse gases.