A Model for Climate Mitigation from the Global South to Wall Street

By Richard H. Lawrence

In the fight against climate change, the world cannot wait for some hoped-for perfect solution in the future. The crisis is upon us, and we need action now.

We need as many different strategies, tools, and ideas as possible; and we need them working right away. We need an all-of-the-above solution.

One such solution is the Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM).

The VCM is not the solution to climate change. But it is a solution.

In Carbon Done Correctly, Richard H. Lawrence, Jr. introduces the VCM through the lens of unsung heroes around the globe who are on the front lines of the fight against climate change.

The story begins in Honduras, where Proyecto Mirador builds fuel-efficient cookstoves in rural communities. Richard tells how a medical mission in the wake of Hurricane Mitch in 1998 spawned a multi-decade venture to build better, cleaner stoves which improve the lives of people in Honduras while reducing carbon emissions into our atmosphere. Always at the center of the story are the remarkable people who made it all possible.

But Proyecto Mirador needed funding to continue its work. Enter the VCM. Richard describes the process of Gold Standard Certification, by which an organization becomes eligible to sell carbon credits, and the subsequent establishing of Cool Effect, a crowdfunding marketplace for carbon-reducing projects around the world.

As Richard shows, for the VCM to succeed and reach its true global potential, transparency and quality must be at the heart of carbon-reducing projects: these projects must reach the Top of the Pyramid.

In Carbon Done Correctly, you will be inspired by the stories of the work that people are doing to combat climate change, and you will see how the VCM provides an essential tool in helping them, and other people in the future, continue and improve that work for the benefit of our planet.

Richard H. Lawrence, Jr., is the Founder and Executive Chairman of Overlook Investments Group, which he established in 1991. Overlook is an independent fund management company that invests in a concentrated portfolio of public equities throughout Asia, excluding Japan.

Richard is a director and co-founder of several non-profit organizations with specific focus on climate change mitigation. In 2004 Richard and his wife, Dee, founded Proyecto Mirador Foundation, a non-profit that has built over 330,000 fuel-efficient stoves in rural communities across Honduras and Guatemala. In 2016 the Lawrences founded Cool Effect, a non-profit online platform that enables individuals and Fortune 500 companies to offset their carbon emissions through the purchase of carbon credits from high integrity carbon reduction projects worldwide. In 2017 they established High Tide Foundation, a non-profit organization involved in climate change mitigation.

Richard is Chairman of the non-profit Carbon Mapper, which deploys satellite technology to pinpoint and track point source emissions, particularly methane. In 2021 he helped establish Global Methane Hub with over $225 million in philanthropic funds to support methane advocacy and mitigation.