Mission

We are approaching an important point in Higher Ground's development of the Vulnerability Reduction Certificate, a new way to measure climate adaptation in concrete terms. This is what we are about: How will the poorest adapt to climate change? Climate change will impact infrastructure, agricultural production, water resources, human health, and ecosystems with potentially devastating consequences to all these systems. Developing countries, while only responsible for a small fraction of historical greenhouse gas emissions, will be hurt the worst.We believe that reducing greenhouse emissions is no longer sufficient; we also need to help communities adapt to climate change by reducing their vulnerability to its harmful effects such as flooding, drought, or extreme weather. To encourage investment in climate adaptation projects, we’ve created the Vulnerability Reduction Credit, or VRCTM, an economic measure of the effects of such projects in reducing vulnerability. The VRC is a tradeable certificate that a project has met and is meeting its adaptation targets. VRCs are a means to quantifiably assess a project, based on sustained attention to maintaining climate resilience. As such they may be used for monitoring and evaluating projects, prioritizing investments, and could be purchased by parties interested in securing verifiable reductions in human vulnerability. Depending on how much the climate changes, adaptation needs will be in the hundreds of billions of dollars annually and will continue to rise. To help get the adaptation process rolling, we have been working over the past couple of years to develop and validate with a group of independent experts our VRC Standard Framework. We plan on releasing the Standard Framework at a public launch this autumn, and are seeking partners for developing VRC projects during the next phase for the Higher Ground Foundation, a pilot execution phase.

Category

Environment

Additional Information

We are approaching an important point in Higher Ground's development. For years we have been working on the concept, talking to groups that work to develop and support adaptation projects, and for the past couple of years developing what we call the "VRC Standard Framework" which is the rule book under which projects can apply to be registered and issued vulnerability reduction certificates. Since January we have convened over 25 experts to validate the Framework and they have provided some very critical improvements. These are being integrated, and we are also finalising development of supporting tools, like our climate Vulnerability Reduction Project Manager tool for urban flood defense. Out next step is a public launch. At this point, anticipated for the Autumn, we need to announce we are "open for business" on a "pilot execution phase" where we intend to work with project funders, project developers, and vulnerable communities on a select number of projects. This phase may last a couple of years, after which we intend to become more hands off as an independent, non-for-profit Standards Body that registers projects and issues credits. This public launch is where we want many of the key pieces to come together with key groups, in a sufficient critical mass to make our vision advance. We need help with the strategic marketing and related activities (social media marketing, targeted outreach, press releases, event planning) to make this happen.