Foresight’s Sustainable Forestry is the first fund to use London Stock Exchange’s Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM) Framework.

The London Stock Exchange has issued its first Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM) designation to Foresight Sustainable Forestry (FSF), a London-listed investment trust that invests in UK forestry and afforestation assets.

The London Stock Exchange says it is the first exchange in the world to apply a public equity market framework to facilitate financing in climate change mitigation projects that generate carbon credits. The Foresight fund provides access to UK forestry and afforestation projects, with future exposure to voluntary carbon markets. Proceeds from FSF’s IPO in 2021 are being invested in planting new woodlands that will result in the removal of more than four million tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere.

The VCM designation requires issuers to produce additional disclosures relating to the projects they are directly or indirectly financing, including but not limited to; the qualifying bodies whose standards will be applied to the projects, project types, expected carbon credit yield and the extent to which they are expecting to meet the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.